Rating: 
Summary: Good Historical Perspective
Review: Like many others, I never forgot the pictures in my intro psych text of Hary Harlow's baby monkies and their surrogate mothers. Blum's very readable book reviews Harlow's work and places it in the historical context of psychology and the social perspectives the middle part of the 1900's.Although the descriptions of Harlow's experiments were well written, the last chapters of Blum's book were most interesting to me. In these chapters, Blum describes the feminist and animal rights back lash against Harlow's work. One can't help be stunned by the irony that Harlow's work, which ultimently championed the importance of mothers' relationships to their children and the deep intelligence of monkies (and their similarities to human beings), would be vilified by these groups. Blum's book is, thus, not only about one of the most innovative psychologists of the past century, but also a great perspective of how we change our thinking about what we are as a species. It is far more than a book about the man who took baby monkies away from their mothers.
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Summary: This book provided reassurance for me as a mother
Review: Love at Goon Park is about Harry Harlow, a scientist who uses monkeys to prove that feeling loved is very, very important to children from the minute they are born and to us all. I was curious about such a scientific project but was totally surprised at how much I enjoyed the book. It's a very good read on every page. The author explains it all clearly and simply, letting her own feeling for both the animals and the people come through. My own children are adults now, but mothers have the hardest job on earth, and we need constant reassurance that we provide a good environment for our family. Reading Love at Goon Park gave me reassurance, and I highly recommend it. You don't have to have a background in science to benefit from its words.
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Summary: Harlow's findings are relevant today
Review: This biography brings us Harry Harlow, a genius in research and a flawed human being. His primate experiments explain the attachment of abused children to their abusers, the importance of early bonding, and I can only wonder what he would think of today's childraising. Too many children are being "nurtured" by a TV or video game; affluent parents turn their offspring over to caretakers who can't speak English nor encourage development, and shuttle them off to impersonal "enrichment programs", and put even the little ones on drugs to control behavior. My grandmother friends and I seek to provide the feedback so necessary for children to grow into confident, loving adults, but I know we are waging a losing battle. This is a very readable book which covers the controversy over Harlow's work fairly. truly a work of scholarship and warmth.
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Summary: Review update
Review: This book has a whole new meaning now that the debate over stem cell research has reached the forefront. Harry Harlow's research cause a plethora of laws to be passed limiting researchers to more ethical, humane treatment of animal subjects. Now, homo sapien babies are the target of the debate over individual rights and the greater good of society. We've saved the rats and the monkeys from murderous research, but the future doesn't look so good for humans. I know the argument: Like African-Americans, women, and Jews of the past, "not quite human enough" for human rights is the classification unborn children receive today. At least other animals are somewhat safe from our selfish desire to live in perfect health forever. Deborah Blum, thank you. You are one of the few who understands Harlow's work.
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Summary: Will someone please turn this into a movie?
Review: This book is a study of love and affection and turns some traditional scientific research on it's ear. Perhaps more ironic is the fact that while Harry was studying love and parenting at the lab, his own wife and children felt deprived by his absense which led to their divorce. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Look at a Psychology Pioneer
Review: This book provides a fascinating portrait of Harry Harlow, a psychology pioneer.The book also brings to life the theories of Harlow, who argued for the value of parental love and relationships when the behavorial psychologists (who studied rat conditioning) still ran acadenia in the 50's and 60's. I could not put this well written book down.
Rating: 
Summary: Great topic, lousy subject
Review: This is an extremely interesting book in terms of underlining how damaging scientific fads can be. The early twentieth century fad of data and cleanliness may well have led to the deaths many children as cleanliness was preferred over attention.
Unfortunately, Harry Harlow is less interesting, and provides an abominable contrast to the subject. Harlow ignores both wives and his children in search for - as he wrote in his school's yearbook - 'fame'. He becomes a chain-smoking alcoholic. Bizarrely, Blum emphasises Harlow's visionary understanding of love with, at times, an almost 'here comes superman' manner. She appears incapable of reconciling her argument that Harlow is the scientist of love with the fact that he ignored his wives and all his children!
If anything, I read the book as reflecting one man's selfish, desperate desire for achievement and fame. Thanks to his interest in monkeys, he and his students seemed to fall over the answer. Not exactly visionary.
A good read though, reflecting the pitfalls of faddish thinking, and also how scientific discoveries (if the fact that a child needs its mother is a discovery) occur. The book also reflects how difficult it can be to refute incorrect arguments.
Rating:
Summary: Rewriting History
Review: Whether by design or naiveté, Blum's Love at Goon Park tells the story of Harry Harlow in such a way that readers with only a passing familiarity with Harlow will come away from the book with the impression that in spite of the clearly troubling nature of his experimental manipulations of baby monkeys, science and humanity - especially young human children - were well served. And readers will have the impression that such things are not allowed in today's laboratories: we have progressed ethically since the days of Harlow.
Blum accomplishes these goals in various ways. One the one hand she blindly (or carefully) omits some key points about Harlow's earliest work with monkeys. She gets it right when explaining that Harlow was surprised that monkeys are highly intelligent problem solvers who are adept at applying past knowledge to novel situations. Harlow felt and wrote that monkeys and humans have the same sort of minds. Blum does not mention the fact that Harlow, upon leaning of these seemingly profound implications, began damaging monkeys' brains and then testing their previous problem solving abilities. (See for instance, his 1950 publication in Science: "The effect of large cortical lesions on learned behavior in monkeys.") Blum also fails to mention the radiation studies Harlow conducted on monkeys. (See for instance, his 1956 publication in the Journal of Comparative Physiology and Psychology: "The effects of repeated doses of total-body x radiation on motivation and learning in rhesus monkeys.") Thus, readers do not understand Harlow's willingness to hurt animals prior to beginning his studies on attachment.
Blum also makes the historically erroneous claim that prior to Harlow's work on attachment no one was paying attention to the work of psychologists studying the effect of social and environmental deprivation in human children. She pointedly claims that Harlow began his work on "... mother love at a time when British psychiatrist John Bowlby could barely persuade his colleagues to join the words `mother' and `love' together." (p 150)
But Bowlby was commissioned by the World Health Organization to study the effects of institutionalization on orphaned children. He published his landmark work, Maternal Care and Mental Health, in 1951. Harlow published "Love in Infant Monkeys" in Scientific American in 1959. Bowlby was neither a pioneer in these studies of human children nor a lone voice. In this area of psychology, Harlow did nothing for human children; his work did, ironically, add to the wealth of evidence that monkeys and humans are disquietingly similar in ethically important ways.
Blum also reshapes history by casting doubt on the veracity and honor of Harlow's critics. For instance, she claims that "until late in Harry's career, animal activists were remarkably respectful of research priorities." (p. 298) Harlow retired in 1974. Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, cited by nearly all historians as the catalyst for the modern animal rights movement, was first published in 1975.
Love at Goon Park is a stark example of propaganda. Though the reasons for Blum's love of primate vivisectors remain obscure, the love and admiration shine forth. Two comments encapsulate all of Blum's studious disingenuousness: "Bill Mason and Sally Mendoza, at the University of California, have done remarkable work with the South American titi monkey." (p 278) And, quoting Bill Mason: "[Harlow] would write about his experiments as if he did them with glee....It made my flesh creep." (p 297)
Here is an example of Mendoza's "remarkable work" with titi's in her own words: "The propensity to seek contact with individuals with which a strong relationship ... is exemplified in the extreme by the South American titi monkey. These monogamous primates spend up to 90% of their day in physical contact with other members of their family group.... We will selectively lesion, using aspiration techniques, different cortical fields in animals from well-established social groups. We will then monitor changes in social behavior and social motivation associated with the loss of a specific field or body part representation therein." (From one of her current publicly-funded NIH grants, "Somatosensory cortex in affective social relationships.")
And William "Bill" Mason's supposed sensitivities to his teacher's research? This seems a bit misleading. His most recently published paper (2004) is titled: "Behavioral and physiological adaptation to repeated chair restraint in rhesus macaques."
Readers beware: Blum's account of Harlow, in Love at Goon Park, is perfectly aligned with her account of the entire industry, Monkey Wars. She is a staunch supporter of the industry and skillfully leads her readers to conclusions not supported by a fair reading of the facts. She presents a selective history and a carefully tailored recitation of the "facts" that seem calculated to put a positive spin on the most ethically challenging human use of animals.
In spite of this, and in part because of it, I recommend Monkey Wars and Love at Goon Park to readers. These books have much interesting information and give much insight into the willingness of the industry to put up with, to defend, and to encourage, essentially any and all forms of cruelty.
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