Next of Kin: My Conversations With Chimpanzees by Roger Fouts, Ph.D, et al.
For three decades primatologist Roger Fouts has been involved in sign language studies with chimpanzee.  While reporting his successes, Fouts also notes that chimpanzees are regularly abused in laboratory settings and that in the wild their number has fallen from 5,000,000 to fewer than 175,000 in the last century.

Reason For Hope: A Spiritual Journey by Jane Goodall.
The memoir of Jane Goodall. Her birth in England, her meeting with her mentor Louis Leakey and her breakthrough studies of Chimps in Gombe. This book tells the story of her life and her continuing work on behalf of her beloved chimps by speaking all over the world in hopes that the world will wake up in time to save these animals from extinction.

In The Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall.
This book focuses primarily on her studies of the chimps of Gombe, the individual chimps she met and named, their offspring and friends and acquaintances.  This book does not read like a scientific study although it is.....It reads like a novel that can't be put down as it is so amazing and a page turner to see what happens next.

Woman In The Mists by Farley Mowat.
The compelling story of Dian Fossey, the expert on the endangered mountain gorillas in Africa. Dian, like Jane Goodal, called Louis Leakey her mentor. Hired in 1966 by Dr. Leakey Dian left her home in Kentucky and moved to Africa to study the mountain gorilla.  What transpired over the course of 19 years until her murder in 1985 is a true love story and one woman's struggle to save her beloved mountain gorillas.

Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo by Birute M.F. Galdikas.
The author is the least known of Dr. Louis Leakey's protégées or chosen angels as they are sometimes called, the other two being Jane Goodal and Dian Fossey.  Dr. Birute is the leading expert on Orangutan's and this book covers her move to the remote jungles of Indonesia in 1971 at the age of 25 to study this solitary great ape.  She continues to this day to be the leading expert and voice of her beloved Orangutans who, like the chimps and gorillas, are running out of time and may become extinct if we don't act now to preserve and protect them. This is an exciting book to read.

Jennie by Douglas Preston.
This is a fictional account of an orphaned chimp rescued by a professor in Africa and brought home to the United States to live as a sibling to two human children and member of the human family in the mid 60's America.  Jennie's story--hilarious, poignant, and ultimately tragic--introduces to American literature one of the most endearing animal heroines in modern fiction.

The Monkey Wars by Deborah Blum.
The war between animal activists and researchers is the compelling story of this book. The author gives voice to the two sides of this emotional debate. From the so-called radical "Animal Liberation Front" who is on the FBI's terrorist list to Roger Fout's research center in Ellensburg, WA where chimps are taught sign language we meet some of the 12 million animal activists and the the researchers they oppose. The author won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for the series of articles that inspired this book.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
"The narrator of this extraordinary tale is a man in search of truth.  he answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling delicately on a slender branch.  "You are the teacher?" he asked incredulously. "I am the teacher," the gorilla replies."  This book changed my life when I read it and gave me a different way of looking at truth.