The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide

What shocked me most about this book is how... smart it is! The author, Richard Conniff, writes for everything from "National Geographic" to "Architectural Digest" and is obviously "in the know" on the side. As a result, he comes off as very intelligent and witty, and I learned more about animal behavior than I did about human behavior.Yes, it is a very witty book. But it also has a serious streak. He backs up his stories of gluttony and excess with anecdotal science from the natural world. He adds just enough history of the rich to provide a firm background and to show that some things just never change.You might be embarrassed to be seen reading it, but it's definately worth picking up. It's fascinating to see how the other .0001% live, and I guarentee you'll learn something.

We are interested in what rich people do. They make the big homes, and the big deals, and have the fanciest clothes and the best choice in dates. We enjoy it when they do things that are silly, stupid, or mistaken. In doing so, we are really doing nothing more than our hominid ancestors did in paying close attention to the chiefs of their tribes; they may not have had money back then, but they had the status and they were carefully watched because of it. Interest in the rich is programmed in our genes. Thus it is a delight to find that the rich can be studied as objects of natural curiosity. Richard Conniff usually writes about other species, but has taken the techniques of the naturalist to study the habits of _homo sapiens peconiosus_ (rich people) in _The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide_ (Norton). He writes that instead of animals in the field, he "... had found a new quarry, and they were possibly the most dangerous and elusive animals on earth." Throughout his witty and informative book, he shows a great sense of fun with his evaluation of this extraordinary species.Conniff gives us many views of rich people acting like animals. The analogies are often easily drawn and obvious. This should not be surprising. Successful tribal animals from all species are driven by "the quest for control, dominance, mating opportunities, and, above all, status." The rich are predatory like jungle cats, or busy with penile displays, like monkeys. It seems that many rich men are addicted to peeing in relatively public places as a show of domination. Ted Turner, who shows up often in this book, gave away a billion dollars to the UN, and disdained his fellow rich people who weren't, in his opinion, doing their share, as he quite ostentatiously was. A virtue is more of a virtue if it is performed privately and not for show, but the rich don't play the game that way any more than other primates do; what he had done was make a "bid for status, as plain as the chest-thumping of rival silverback gorillas." The rich maintain that they already have it made and they don't have any need to impress anyone, but that's not the way they behave: "...they usually mean only that they have drastically narrowed down the list of people they are interested in impressing." Other rich people, or ghosts of doubting fathers or teachers. Part of the fun of the book is that Conniff knows a wealth of examples to draw upon, and there is lots to learn about what we usually take to be animals as well as rich people. For instance, in discussing the way rich men have arranged for other men not to make attempts on their wives ("mate guarding"), he informs us about dragon flies. Anyone who has seen dragonflies knows that they spend some of their time flying in tandem, with the male locked onto the female. It is wrong to assume they are enjoying in-flight coitus; probably they already got that out of the way, but the male is sticking to his mate until she lays her eg

Richard Conniff is one of my favorite writers and this current offering is just as intellectually stimulating and entertaining as any of his previous works. Enjoy a walk on the wild side while Mr. Conniff explores our animal nature as it pertains to the most wealthy among us. Travel back to a time when wealth was not measured in monetary terms as we know it now but in such things as exotic foods offered to guests and how great a party you could throw. Insightful theories as to how the rich became rich and how they remain rich coupled with the observation of behaviors that echo our ape ancestors sets this literary effort apart from your usual sociological exploration. This well written and humorous effort deserves a standing ovation and a cry of BRAVO!

Richard Conniff's book is a rare find these days: imaginative, witty, intelligent, informative, clear, engrossing to the very end, and often laugh-out-loud funny. I recommend it highly and look forward to reading whatever the talented Mr. Conniff is planning next.