As a conscientious objector, Peterson was assigned to alternative service in 1971 at a large U.S. Veterans Administration hospital, working as an attendant on a lock-up ward for severely disturbed or mentally ill patients, many of them diagnosed with schizophrenia.

[2] After receiving his doctorate, Peterson turned to carpentry, becoming a high-end finish carpenter engaged in remodeling houses in Silicon Valley, incidentally developing some friendships and connections with various people in the computer industry.

Making the decision to write about primates, Peterson began to research the topic at libraries but soon took a more direct approach in a series of arduous trips into tropical forests around the world: starting in the coastal forests of southeastern Brazil, then floating for two thousand miles down the Amazon River from central to the eastern Amazon; exploring critical areas in West, Central, and East Africa; and proceeding from there to Madagascar, southern India, Borneo, Sumatra, and the Mentawai Islands.

Published in 1989, The Deluge and the Ark: A Journey into Primate Worlds was short-listed for the Sir Peter Kent Conservation Prize in Great Britain.

[4] With Harvard University biological anthropologist Professor Richard Wrangham, Peterson co-authored the classic evolutionary study of human violence Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (1996), which has been translated into nine foreign languages and honored by The Village Voice as Best of the Year.

Additional recent works include The Moral Lives of Animals (2011) and a play for children entitled Jane of the Apes, which was co-authored with Randel Wright.

In sweeping detail, The Ghosts of Gombe reveals for the first time the full story of day-to-day life at Goodall's wilderness camp—the people and the animals, the stresses and excitements, the social conflicts and cultural alignments, and the astonishing friendships that developed between three of the researchers and three of the chimpanzees—during the months preceding that tragic event.

At the same time, it gathers together the story of the young woman's death, examines how it might have happened, and explores some of the painful sequelae that haunted two of the survivors for the rest of their lives.