04/20/2020
Paleoanthropologist Leakey’s disappointing debut memoir isn’t nearly as illuminating about her storied career as one might hope. Writing with the aid of her daughter Samira, Leakey shares bits of her life, mentioning almost in passing the births of her two daughters and her marriage to a fellow paleoanthropologist, Richard Leakey, but her main focus is on the discoveries she and her team made about the fossil record of early humans and pre-humans. These include the 1999 discovery of a skull that she identified as coming from a previously unknown species of hominin: Kenyanthropus platyops, or “flat-faced man from Kenya.” The fossils drive her story to such an extent that the chronology of her career is difficult to follow. Leakey also spends significant time providing readers with rudimentary scientific grounding largely tangential to her story, discussing, in an accessible, if rather pedestrian, manner topics such as how climate works, the ability that some nonhuman primates have to use language, and the methodology used to acquire and age Antarctic ice cores. Leakey’s fascinating life and work deserve more attention than they received in this volume. Agent: Gillian MacKenzie, MacKenzie Wolf. (Aug.)
A New York Times Editors' Choice One of A Mighty Girl 's 2020 Books of the Year "In a field of celebrity scientists, nobody shines brighter than Meave Leakey. She was once the scion, and is now matriarch, of the Leakey dynasty, three generations of paleoanthropological royalty...[She] tells her extraordinary life story in The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past . Co-written with her youngest daughter, Samira, this inspirational autobiography stands among the finest scientist memoirs."—New York Times Book Review "An excellent overview of how we know what we know about human evolution . . . Meave Leakey is a real-life Indiana Jones. Her life has been filled with adventure, struggle, and discovery after amazing discovery that are detailed in her riveting autobiography, The Sediments of Time ."—Forbes "The Sediments of Time is a fascinating glimpse into our origins. Meave Leakey is a great storyteller, and she presents new information about the far off time when we emerged from our ape-like ancestors to start the long journey that has led to our becoming the dominant species on Earth. That story, woven into her own journey of research and discovery, gives us a book that is informative and captivating, one that you will not forget."—Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute “An exciting and richly informative scientist’s autobiography…This major work of scientific dedication and original insight illuminates both our distant past and our current, serious, human-caused planetary challenges.”— Booklist Review *starred* The Sediments of Time , will learn a few details about her personal life....But the main and most illuminating parts of [the book] are about the tedious, painstaking years spent hunting for the fossilized remains of our species’ precursors. Drawing on field notes, interviews and research papers, Meave recounts the work that led to some of her and her team’s greatest discoveries....Meave and her co-writer, her youngest daughter Samira Leakey, write clearly and compellingly about what these discoveries mean...A thrilling account.”— BookPage *starred* The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past , co-written with her daughter Samira, reflects on her life in science and pieces together what we now understand about the climate-driven evolution of our species."—Guardian “An engaging memoir...A marvelous account of what it is like for a celebrated scientist to take on some of the most vital and vexing questions regarding human origins and to come up with biocultural answers.”—Science “Meave describes a life that many readers will envy. Her discoveries, often after numbingly tedious work in a brutal climate, added new species to our family tree, teased out more information about existing ancestors, and increased our knowledge of how evolution, geology, and climate change gave rise to modern humans. She is not shy about explaining all this....An illuminating memoir of an impressive scientist.” —Kirkus Reviews The Sediments of Time strikes a careful balance between pure science and a palatable account of our past . . . Working in withering heat and battling flies, dust storms, and staticky radios, Leakey’s adventurous life is not for the faint of heart. But, her excitement at new discoveries is palpable . . . The memoir is a wonderful mother-daughter collaboration."
—The East African "Fossils, hyaenas, and eccentric scientists almost literally jump off the page in Meave Leakey's exuberant memoir. This riveting read takes you on the unplanned but glorious adventure that has been Meave's life of discovery. Her love of learning and quest for knowledge about our origins inspire every page and will set your mind alight!"—Nina G. Jablonski, PhD, Penn State University, Author of Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color “Meave Leakey confronts extraordinary challenges that ultimately yield unimaginably rich rewards. THE SEDIMENTS OF TIME offers everything for everyone: exciting fossil finds, courageous expeditions, seminal paleoanthropological contributions to science, and convincing scientific evidence to support climate change. Meave has labored five decades filling the gaps in Homo sapien ’s 3+ million year journey of evolution. She also verifies global climate change by analyzing fossil teeth, 800,000 year old ocean floor ice cores, and Milankovitch’s sun-earth alignment to explain global glaciation and torrid periods. She is a researcher extraordinaire." —Gilbert Grosvenor, Former President and Chairman of National Geographic "Involved for five decades in collecting, describing and interpreting an extraordinary range of fossils critical to understanding human evolution, Meave Leakey and her daughter Samira present us here with a welcome and accomplished example of accessible science writing in this engaging and deeply informed book."
—David Pilbeam, PhD, Henry Ford II Research Professor of Human Evolution, Harvard University "A fascinating memoir and whirlwind tour of research into human origins by one of the preeminent explorers of our age; an inspiration for new generations of researchers and the wider public alike.”—Fred Spoor, PhD, Natural History Museum, U.K. "Meave Leakey has long been recognized as one of the world’s leading paleoanthropologists. In this memoir, Meave recounts her East African field expeditions and shares broad insights into anatomy, geology, paleontology, botany, language, and human behavior. Her contributions to solving some the puzzles of human evolution illustrate how field and laboratory work, analytical studies, and long-term collaborations work together to shape scientific knowledge. Hers is a remarkable and inspiring life story."—Thure Cerling, PhD, Francis Brown Presidential Chair, University of Utah "As the daughter-in-law of renowned paleoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, Meave Leakey had big shoes to fill — and she did so with gusto . . . This is the story not just of Leakey's life and discoveries, but also of how our species' past could help us define and understand our future."—A Mighty Girl , 2020 Books of the Year
09/01/2020
Paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey (research professor, Stony Brook Univ.) has penned a memoir, cowritten with her daughter Samira, chronicling her life hunting fossils and piecing together the mystery of hominid evolution. Trained as a marine zoologist, Meave was hired by archaeologist Louis Leakey to work at Tigoni Primate Research Centre in Kenya. Invited to Koobi Fora by fellow paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, Maeve soon became interested in fossil hunting; the two married and worked together until Richard was asked to lead Kenya's wildlife conservation efforts, leaving Meave to coordinate the paleontological fieldwork in the Turkana Basin. While raising a family and dealing with Richard's health challenges, Meave describes life in camp sifting through mounds of soil in search of small bones, punctuated by important discoveries. She weaves hypotheses about hominid evolution, from bipedality to diet changes, including complementary sciences such as dating fossils, cultural anthropology, geological history, and astronomy, through the story of her life, while also touching on other important fossil finds and how they relate to the Turkana Basin discoveries. VERDICT An accessible account of a fascinating life intertwined with well-documented scientific facts and hypotheses. For those who enjoy science memoirs and investigative works on evolution.—Sue O'Brien, Downers Grove, IL
With crisp British enunciation, narrator Susan Myers portrays the preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey. Leakey, wife of Richard Leakey, daughter-in-law of Mary and Lewis Leakey, who discovered the early human ancestor called Lucy, describes her digs and finds on the shores of Lake Turkana in northwest Kenya. Throughout this history of science and discovery, Leakey describes her search to learn why hominids shifted from walking on four feet to two. Through Myers’s engaging narration, listeners learn about prehistoric environmental changes that affected plants and animals, especially hominids of all species and genera. Myers’s skilled and graceful narration of Leakey’s words describes the dating of fossils, ash, and sediment layers and the evolution of teeth, jaws, and skulls between seven and two million years ago. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile
2020-04-22
Patriarch Louis Leakey (1903-1972) demonstrated, after a considerable struggle, that humans evolved in Africa and made pioneering discoveries in Kenya along with his wife, Mary, who added her own. Louis’ son, Richard, carried on the family tradition. Meave is Richard’s wife, and readers need not fear that absence of founder DNA diluted the Leakey genius, because it’s clear from this memoir that baby Meave hit the ground running. Daughter of a surgeon in rural Britain, before age 10, she was cultivating and selling eggs, geese, and lambs. As a teenager, she traveled the world, attended a nearly all-male technical school, and fell in love with the ocean during holidays at the beach. After obtaining a degree in marine biology, she discovered that no jobs existed because research ships in the 1960s could not “accommodate” women. Phoning to answer an ad for a research position in Africa, she found herself speaking to Louis Leakey, who hired her after determining that she would work for little money under difficult conditions and possessed the ability to repair a car. She started at a research center in Nairobi, where she cared for and dissected monkeys to obtain her doctorate and met Richard Leakey. She joined him in his field research and proved herself as hardy, obsessive, observant, opinionated, and—essential in searching for human remains—as lucky as her relations. Aided by daughter Samira, who lives with her family in Kenya, Maeve describes a life that many readers will envy. Her discoveries, often after numbingly tedious work in a brutal climate, added new species to our family tree, teased out more information about existing ancestors, and increased our knowledge of how evolution, geology, and climate change gave rise to modern humans. She is not shy about explaining all this, although some details will overwhelm general readers.
An illuminating memoir of an impressive scientist.
