First is my review of the book followed by the actual review on the Harvard website. It merely replaced a few words for effect.

Manipulative Mormons takes us into Nauvoo, Illinois teeming with unseemly drama, where since 1840 patriarchologists Susan Perry and Joseph H. Manson have followed the lives of four generations of Mormons. What the authors describe is behavior as entertaining--and occasionally as alarming--as it is recognizable: the competition and cooperation, the jockeying for position and status, the peaceful years under an alpha male devolving into bloody chaos, and the complex traditions passed from one generation to the next. Interspersed with their observations of the Mormons’ lives are the authors’ colorful tales of the challenges of frontier fieldwork--a mixture so rich that by the book’s end we know what it is to be a wild fundamentalist Mormon or a field primatologist. And we are left with a clear sense of the importance of these aggrandized Mormons for understanding human behavioral evolution.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=31188

Manipulative Monkeys takes us into a Costa Rican forest teeming with simian drama, where since 1990 primatologists Susan Perry and Joseph H. Manson have followed the lives of four generations of capuchins. What the authors describe is behavior as entertaining--and occasionally as alarming--as it is recognizable: the competition and cooperation, the jockeying for position and status, the peaceful years under an alpha male devolving into bloody chaos, and the complex traditions passed from one generation to the next. Interspersed with their observations of the monkeys’ lives are the authors’ colorful tales of the challenges of tropical fieldwork--a mixture so rich that by the book’s end we know what it is to be a wild capuchin monkey or a field primatologist. And we are left with a clear sense of the importance of these endangered monkeys for understanding human behavioral evolution.

I like this idea. I found Utah to be "teeming with simian drama".

http://bycommonconsent.com/2010/08/12/look-out-world/.

in Europe?" Bhahaha.. thanks for the link, derrida.

Some of the comments were pretty self-aware. I see the inspired "Every Member a Missionary" program I grew up with has come back to bite them on the buttocks.

I remember being told to bake bread or cookies and introduce ourselves to our neighbors as the first step in bearing our testmonkeys/ inviting them AND the missionaries over for dinner/asking them to go to church.

Of course people are now suspicious of "friendly" Mormons.