I'll be honest- I had a really hard time getting through this book. I just didn't like the author's attitude. He made snide remarks about the locals, made a point of stating only what the (extremely underfunded) sanctuaries were doing wrong, and bullied the real experts into saying what he wanted them to say & if they didn't he'd just say something along the lines of "this is what he/she said- but they're wrong" without giving the reader any reason to believe that the expert is wrong except that he says so. At one point he even makes a volunteer feel bad for spending $4000 to volunteer at an ape sanctuary because "she could have given them the money she spent on a plane ticket as well" as if physical labor isn't also needed at sanctuaries. Obviously this is a guy who's never actually had to spend a day hauling crates of food around, maintaining enclosures or shoveling shit- I know I speak for most sanctuary employees when I tell you that we LOVE our volunteers.
These examples are not constants in the book (each example only happened once or twice), but because they happened at all, I felt like they poisoned the entire book.
Paul Raffaele is no expert. He's a travel journalist by trade who's written two other books, Among the Cannibals (Apparently he's not very creative with book titles either) and The Last Tribes on Earth.
I have a hard time believing someone who tries to prove he's comfortable with animals by putting this picture on the back of his book:
He may be comfortable with animals, but he's not very smart with them.
I will give him this; he's passionate about saving these animals, and his book does have some heart-warming stories & a call to action at the end.
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