Phillip L. Berman

Jane Goodall’s Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey isn’t only about her experiences with chimpanzees in Africa, but it also covers her life’s journey. The writer provided glances of her childhood with a love of animals. She wrote about a supportive mother and family members, who were responsible for much of her spiritual growth and development.
Readers learned how she saved money by working odd jobs and as a waitress, so that she could afford to go to Africa to fulfill her childhood dreams. While on that continent she worked with Louis Leaky, and went on digs for fossils. But this paleontologist made it possible for her to go to Gombe to study chimpanzees. Goodall spent years in the wild documenting how these creatures lived. Her greatest discovery was when she witnessed these chimps making, and using tools with stems to get their food.
Goodall with her persistence was able to develop a good working relationship with these animals. Each member in their groups was identified by a name. Unfortunately, the author was unlucky in marriage. Her first husband was a photographer, who documented many of her findings, with whom she had a son called Grub. But this marriage ended in a divorce. She later fell in love with a game warden on an African reservation who she married, but he died not long afterwards from cancer.
Goodall eventually became world famous. She earned a doctorate, and held a position as an associate professor at Sanford University. The author busily travels to give lectures around the world, and to promote the Jane Goodall Institute. She also formed Roots & Shoots for young people from grade school to university level in many countries. These organizations focus on protecting the environment, working to prevent deforestation, and promoting the natural habitats for animals.… (mer)

Jane Goodall enchanted me when I first heard her audio tape. She is unofficially the "chimpanzee-woman" who spent many years living with and studying with the wild chimpanzees. From a wide eyed student, she has become a crusader for a ... well, a reason for hope.

For me there was nothing extraordinairly new ... the overindulgence of meat/sugar consumption, corporations/governments controlling our food supply, and the imbalances of the have/have nots. Still there is an underlying wisdom of a woman who has seen and experienced a lot. And sometimes it takes several exposures before I really start to embrace an idea.

Funny the past several weeks I have been feeling cloudy in my head. I suspect that a lot of the feeling is from straying to laziness in my eating habits. So I've cut back on my sushi intake and meat in general. Somewhere during the past couple weeks I have indulged in some Starbucks coffee as well ...

And wow I even closed my WoW (World of Warcraft) account. I just let it expire so that I can find more productive things that playing a computer game 4-6 days a week. Perhaps, I'll return sometime next month for a final run ... or maybe I'll find something else to invest my energies in.… (mer)

I appreciate Jane Goodall as a person. Her work and her life have certainly been remarkable and inspirational. I like the idea that humans are on this earth to fulfill their spiritual and ethical development as a species. There is a lot of food for thought in this book from Jane's own experience. It makes a case for our collective responsibility to mother earth and all creatures great and small.

That said, there are a few things that were mentioned here that annoyed me a little, and I would like to think that they are the fault of the people who abridged this edition. The full description of the crime of the holocaust and the horrors of Auschwitz / Birkenau stands jarringly against a small paragraph about Palestinian children proclaiming their wish to kill Jews and become suicide bombers. The "bad guys" here are all nicely compartmentalized, they are Germans, Arabs and African. Meanwhile Petrol companies like BP are trying to do something for the environment, give me a break.
I do not want to belittle a good book but these two observations made it lose some credibility in my eyes (3 1/2 stars) instead of a full 4.… (mer)