The prose is perfectly pitched: Sapolsky writes in a jocular, entertaining style without ever pandering to the presumed ignorance of his readers. And he expresses infectious enthusiasm, especially when he is reporting on new experiments performed by colleagues in his field

Sapolsky, who has a weakness for Martian jokes, is a bona fide boffin, but he looks beyond the lab for his case studies, assembling a cast that includes Sandra Bullock and a love-struck baboon named Jonathan. This highly readable book will both inform and enlarge your appreciation of the mystery of existence

The author of Monkeyluv, an entertaining collection of essays about humans and animals, is also a luminary among that rare breed - the funny scientist. These essays on genetic wars between men and women, dreams, bad moods, ambiguity and stress are...a combination of Oliver Sacks and David Foster Wallace

Sapolsky gives us these and many more intriguing gene factoids, but he also explains the elaborate nature/nurture interactions in which they are embedded...the book is a witty blend of anecdote and analysis

Fascinating

Compelling. His spirit of intellectual adventuring is infectious

Cocker is a beautiful writer...the twilight and his beloved rooks bring out the poet in him...a loving observation of the wonders on the wing in everyday England

The nation's most observant and intuitive of nature writers

As obsessive a celebration of rook and jackdaw - and of human immersion in nature - as anyone could wish

A vivid example of the "new nature writing" it is a lyrical and intense evocation of the world of jackdaws and rook, and an elegy on watchfulness