This month I am re-reading The Year of the Gorilla by George B. Schaller.

This book played a critical role in helping to shape my understanding of the gorilla in my research for creating the Beloved Ivan sculpture.

This seminal work chronicles George B. Schaller’s two years of travel and observation of gorillas in East and Central Africa in the late 1950s, high in the Virunga volcanoes on the Zaire-Rwanda-Uganda border. There, he learned that these majestic animals, far from being the aggressive apes of film and fiction, form close-knit societies of caring mothers and protective fathers watching over playful young. Alongside his observations of gorilla society, Schaller celebrates the enforced yet splendid solitude of the naturalist, recounts the adventures he experienced along the way, and offers a warning against poaching and other human threats against these endangered creatures. 

Book: The Year of the Gorilla

Author: George B. Schaller

Buy it or read more: Amazon, Good Reads