Annotation As Jane Goodall never fails to mention, "bush meat is the greatest conservation crisis in my lifetime." This book documents in text and photographs how wild animals in the Congo Basin, particularly the Great Apes but also chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas, are slaughtered and used for human consumption.

The guerrillas who terrorized Missouri during the Civil War were colorful men whose daring and vicious deeds brought them a celebrity never enjoyed by the Federal soldiers who hunted them. Many books have been written about William Quantrill, "Bloody Bill" Anderson, George Todd, Tom Livingston and other noted guerrillas. You have probably not heard of George Wolz, Aaron Caton, John Durnell, Thomas Holston or Ludwick St. John. They served in Union cavalry regiments in Missouri, where neither side showed mercy to defeated foes. They are just five of the anonymous thousands who, in the end, defeated the guerrillas and have been forgotten with the passage of time. This is their story.

Being best buds with a great ape is basically the most awesome thing in the entire world. They're excellent wingmen. They're accomplished bargain hunters. And their impressive dexterity makes them the perfect ping-pong partners. The perks are pretty much endless. Whether you need a hand organizing an Olympic-caliber bobsled team or fancy a leisurely stroll, a Gorilla is the ideal companion for whatever it is you're game to do. And the guidance they give is the absolute tops. Gorillas know the dish on the hippest eateries around and provide financial advice that's unbelievably sound (as they hold true to a "don't spend what you don't have" policy). Everything Is Better with a Gorilla because, well, it just is.

When the hunters come to the forest, Kijo the gorilla loses his mother. Who will look after him now? Suggested level: junior.

What makes humans unique? What makes us the most successful animal species inhabiting the Earth today? Most scientists agree that the key to our success is the unusually large size of our brains. Our large brains gave us our exceptional thinking capacity and led to humans' other distinctive characteristics, including advanced communication, tool use, and walking on two legs. Or was it the other way around? Did the challenges faced by early humans push the species toward communication, tool use, and walking and, in doing so, drive the evolutionary engine toward a large brain? In this provocative new book, Craig Stanford presents an intriguing alternative to this puzzling question--an alternative grounded in recent, groundbreaking scientific observation. According to Stanford, what made humans unique was meat. Or, rather, the desire for meat, the eating of meat, the hunting of meat, and the sharing of meat. Based on new insights into the behavior of chimps and other great apes, our now extinct human ancestors, and existing hunting and gathering societies, Stanford shows the remarkable role that meat has played in these societies. Perhaps because it provides a highly concentrated source of protein--essential for the development and health of the brain--meat is craved by many primates, including humans. This craving has given meat genuine power--the power to cause males to form hunting parties and organize entire cultures around hunting. And it has given men the power to manipulate and control women in these cultures. Stanford argues that the skills developed and required for successful hunting and especially the sharing of meat spurred the explosion of human brain size over the past 200,000 years. He then turns his attention to the ways meat is shared within primate and human societies to argue that this all-important activity has had profound effects on basic social structures that are still felt today. Sure to spark a lively debate, Stanford's argument takes the form of an extended essay on human origins. The book's small format, helpful illustrations, and moderate tone will appeal to all readers interested in those fundamental questions about what makes us human.

The Gorilla Hunters: A Tale of the Wilds of Africa (1861) is a boys' adventure novel by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. A sequel to his hugely successful 1858 novel The Coral Island and set in "darkest Africa", its main characters are the earlier novel's three boys: Ralph, Peterkin and Jack. The book's themes are similar to those of The Coral Island, in which the boys testify to the positive influence of missionary work among the natives. Central in the novel is the hunt for gorillas, an animal until recently unknown to the Western world, which came to play an important role in contemporary debates on evolution and the relation between white Westerners and Africans.