Readers will likely agree with Susan Perry that capuchins are the most intelligent and fascinating of the New World monkeys. This fine book, in the tradition of Jane Goodall's "In the Shadow of Man" (1971), mixes rich descriptions of the personal lives of primates (in Goodall's case, chimpanzees) and of the primatologists. Perry and her husband, Joe Manson, and their coworkers, during nearly two decades of on-going study at a site in Costa Rica, rise at 3 AM to follow the capuchins, machete-cutting through the entangling forest, suffering ticks, wasps, snakes, fungal infections, frequent hospital visits, and maniac drivers when back on the road. For my own brief "study" of capuchins, I sat at a comfortable restaurant and bar on the beach near Manuel Antonio National Park, cold drink in hand, watching these little animals in the surrounding trees, but that hardly counts as primatology.
Like Goodall and subsequent primatologists whom she inspired, Perry offers anthropocentric interpretations of her subjects' behaviors, less objective that one would find in a research journal but certainly permissible in this accessible account, which is further enlivened by the author's wit and her obvious love for the arduous work. I suspect that many young readers will contact Susan Perry about signing on for a year as research assistant. I know one who has already.