almost us: portraits of the apes

After you spot a dozen of your relatives among these candid portraits, you'll see why the great apes are called our close cousins. The portraits on the back cover show a frowning gorilla looking at a smiling one, an inquiring chimpanzee, a smiling orangutan gazing skyward, and a fashion portrait of a wet bonobo.

WILLIAM H. CALVIN, Ph.D., is a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, affiliate faculty at the Living Links Center of Emory University, and a science advisor to the Great Ape Trust of Iowa. His research interests include how brains work, how humans evolved, how language ability came about, and how evolution speeds up when the earth’s climate abruptly flips. He is the author of a dozen books for general readers and won the Phi Beta Kappa book award for science.