Mama's Last Hug

Reviews

"Through colorful stories and riveting prose, de Waal firmly puts to rest the stubborn notion that humans alone in the animal kingdom experience a broad array of emotions....De Waal contributes immensely to an ethical sea change for animals." — Barbara J. King, NPR

"De Waal’s eye-opening observations argue for better treatment and greater appreciation of animals, even as he ensures that you’ll never look at them—or yourself—the same way again." — People

"Game-changing....For too long, emotion has been cognitive researchers’ third rail....But nothing could be more essential to understanding how people and animals behave. By examining emotions in both, this book puts these most vivid of mental experiences in evolutionary context, revealing how their richness, power and utility stretch across species and back into deep time....The book succeeds most brilliantly in the stories de Waal relates." — Sy Montgomery, The New York Times Book Review

"An original thinker, [de Waal] seems to invite us to his front-row seats, sharing the popcorn as he gets us up to speed on the plot of how life works, through deeply affecting stories of primates and other animals, all dramas with great lessons for our own species." — Vicki Constantine Croke, Boston Globe

"De Waal’s conversational writing is at times moving, often funny and almost always eye-opening....It’s hard to walk away from Mama’s Last Hug without a deeper understanding of our fellow animals and our own emotions." — Erin Wayman, Science News

"A captivating and big-hearted book, full of compassion and brimming with insights about the lives of animals, including human ones." — Yuval Noah Harari, New York Times best-selling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

"Before I realized Frans de Waal’s connection to Mama’s actual last hug, I sent the online video link to a large group of scientists saying, ‘I believe it is possible to view this interaction and be changed forever.’ Likewise, I believe that anyone reading this book will be changed forever. De Waal has spent so many decades watching intently and thinking deeply that he sees a planet that is deeper and more beautiful than almost anyone realizes. In these pages, you can acquire and share his beautiful, shockingly insightful view of life on Earth." — Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel

"I doubt that I've ever read a book as good as Mama's Last Hug, because it presents in irrefutable scientific detail the very important fact that animals do have these emotions as well as the other mental features we once attributed only to people. Not only is the book exceedingly important, it's also fun to read, a real page-turner. I can't say enough good things about it except it's utterly splendid." — Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

"Frans de Waal is one of the most influential primatologists to ever walk the earth, changing the way we think of human nature by exploring its continuity with other species. He does this again in the wonderful Mama’s Last Hug, an examination of the continuum between emotion in humans and other animals. This subject is rife with groundless speculation, ideology, and badly misplaced folk intuition, and de Waal ably navigates it with deep insight, showing the ways in which our emotional lives are shared with other primates. This is an important book, wise and accessible." — Robert Sapolsky, author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

"In Mama’s Last Hug, Frans de Waal marshals his wealth of knowledge and experience, toggling expertly between rigorous science and captivating anecdote to explain animal behavior—humans included. While doing so, he rebukes the common conceit that we are necessarily better, or smarter, than our closest relatives." — Jonathan Balcombe, author of What a Fish Knows