Gorilla by George B. Schaller, Michael Nichols, Nan Richardson (1992, Paperback, Reprint)

On my way to the Virungas to try to see one or more endangered mountain gorillas, I purchased every book that I could find in print on gorillas (lowland and mountain). The predecessor to this fine volume, "Gorilla: Struggle for Survival in the Virungas by George Schaller and Nan Richardson," from 1988, provided an exquisite overview of the geological and primatological history of the gorilla, one of the apes genetically closest to humans. The photos of the animals and their habitat are breathtaking; the biological context is solid; and the comprehension of socialogical as well as ecological interventions required are exceptionally well-researched. This volume is equally grounded and reasonable. Unlike the better-known "Gorillas in the Mist (1988) by Dian Fossey, or the relatively unknown "Dark Romance of Dian Fossey," 1990, by columnist Harold Hayes, or the quite personally-attacking "In the Kingdom of Gorillas: Fragile Species in a Dangerous Land," by Bill Weber and Amy Vedder, Schaller's treatise remains founded in biology and avoidant of either the pro-Fossey sidetracks of the Hayes book or the anti-Fossey diatribes by Webber-Vedder (or the near-psychotic imagined-sequences of "Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey"). In reading all of the aforementioned side by side, one comes to know generations of Virunga gorillas - I myself saw one, a young male referred to in the books, now the second silverback in the troop I visited - as well as succeeding perspectives on Rwanda and the multi-disciplinary attempts to preserve the country and its ape inhabitants.