Meave Leakey

This is pretty niche, but I loved it. I particularly loved it as someone who read Johanesen's Lucy sometime back in the 80s -- this is a great catch-up of what's been happening in the last 20-30 years in fossil hunting and the question marks over hominin evolution. It's totally fascinating. Often a little too technical for me to follow -- I agree with the advice on a different review -- it's worth it to skim and hear the tremendous discoveries and stories.

Honestly, it's also just so mind boggling to think that what we know of the ancient past is due to people spending their time hunting for fossilized remains in the desert. It's mind-blowing to hear what they discover when they discover these bits and pieces and how that all adds to an understanding of the world millions of years ago.… (mehr)

The weakest of the anthropology memoirs and stories that I have read recently. I would recommend instead Kermit Pattison's "Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind". It has more science, more personal anecdotes—more of everything.

> I was technically a marine biologist. Or so I had planned, with my freshly minted joint degree in zoology and marine biology. But behold the world in the late 1960s. Homo sapiens had not, apparently, evolved so far as to allow female marine biologists onto ships. “We cannot employ you because we don’t have the facilities for you,” I had been told time and again by the men running the expeditions.… (mehr)