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The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide First Edition

by Richard Conniff (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 53 ratings
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A tantalizing, droll study of the idiosyncratic existence of the very rich, through the unexpected lens of the naturalist.

Journalist Richard Conniff probes the age-old question "Are the rich different from you and me?" and finds that they are indeed a completely different animal. He observes with great humor this socially unique species, revealing their strategies for ensuring dominance and submission, their flourishes of display behavior, the intricate dynamics of their pecking order, as well as their unorthodox mating practices. Through comparisons to other equally exotic animals, Conniff uncovers surprising commonalities.

29 photographs.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0393324885
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0393324884
  3. Edition
    First Edition
  4. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  5. Publication date
    October 17, 2003
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1 x 8.2 inches
  8. Print length
    346 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Clever, perceptive and unfailingly interesting."
― Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

"Droll and delightful…Mr. Conniff's charm and fun-loving approach make his book a pleasure from start to finish."
― New York Sun

"Amusing and insightful."
― Boston Herald

"A witty compendium of gossip, anecdotes, history and sociobiological research."
― Town and Country

"Hilarious."
― New York Magazine

"This book...may change for ever our perception of the urge to make money."
― Financial Times

"A literate, gossipy and altogether engaging romp."
― Smithsonian Magazine

"Anecdotal, witty, and wonderfully informative."
― Dominick Dunne

"In this witty, well-written field guide, Richard Conniff studies the rich as a biologist studies the mighty mountain gorilla. In the process, he brings the rich down to earth as not only merely human, but distinctly animal."
― Frans de Waal, author of Mama’s Last Hug

"A delightful field-study of the habits of the rich and famous, full of acutely observed insights."
― Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape

About the Author

Richard Conniff, a Guggenheim Fellow and winner of the National Magazine Award, writes for Smithsonian and National Geographic and is a frequent commentator on NPR's All Things Considered and a guest columnist for the New York Times. His books include The Natural History of the Rich, Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time, and The Species Seekers. He lives in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition (October 17, 2003)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 346 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393324885
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393324884
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.2 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 53 ratings

About the author

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Richard Conniff

Richard Conniff

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Richard Conniff writes about behavior on two, four, six, and eight legs. He has collected tarantulas in the Peruvian Amazon, tracked leopards with !Kung San hunters in the Namibian desert, climbed the Mountains of the Moon in western Uganda, and trekked through the Himalayas of Bhutan in pursuit of tigers and the mythical migur.

His latest book is Ending Epidemics: A History of Escape from Contagion (MIT Press, 2023). Also out in paperback are his books The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth (Norton, 2010) and Swimming With Piranhas at Feeding Time: My Life Doing Dumb Stuff with Animals (Norton, 2009). He is the author of The Ape in the Corner Office: How to Make Friends, Win Fights, and Work Smarter By Understanding Human Nature (Crown, 2004), The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide (Norton, 2002); Every Creeping Thing: True Tales of Faintly Repulsive Wildlife (Holt, 1998); Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World (Holt, 1996, now available as an eBook); and other books.

The New York Times Book Review says, "Conniff is a splendid writer--fresh, clear, uncondescending, and with never a false step; one can't resist quoting him."

Conniff also writes about wildlife, human cultures and other topics for Time, Smithsonian, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, and other publications in the United States and abroad. His magazine work in Smithsonian won the 1997 National Magazine Award, and was included in The Best American Science and Nature Writing in 2000, 2002, and 2007. Conniff is also the winner of the 2001 John Burroughs Award for Outstanding Nature Essay of the Year, a 2009 Loeb Award for distinguished business journalism, a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship,and a 2012 Alicia Patterson Fellowship.

Conniff has been a frequent commentator on NPR and recently served as a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times online. He has written and presented television shows for National Geographic, TBS, Animal Planet, the BBC, and Channel Four in the UK. His television work has been nominated for an Emmy Award for distinguished achievement in writing, and he won the 1998 Wildscreen Prize for Best Natural History Television Script for the BBC show Between Pacific Tides.

You can follow him on Twitter @RichardConniff, and on his blog http://strangebehaviors.wordpress.com/

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
53 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Secret Santa
5.0 out of 5 stars Get ready to laugh like a howler monkey.
Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2013
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If you're not scientifically minded, or you were born without the part of the brain that handles sense of humor, you won't like this book. But if you're the kind of person I'd like to hang out with (I'm just going to go with monkey puns whenever they come up, if that's okay), you're going to love this book.

Ever wonder why a movie star would pay two grand for a sweater that looks like it was fished from a dumpster in a Goodwill parking lot? Wonder no longer! Ever questioned the motivations of a notoriously sinister hedge fund manager, known to rob the retirements of honest working folk, who creates charities dedicated to putting an end to homelessness? Me to. Richard Conniff explains it all, in hilariously penetrating fashion. Conniff, a veteren naturalist, isn't impressed with the 10,000 square foot houses and Italian sports cars. He sees a bunch of primates jockeying for social position. To him, their behavior's pretty simple, and predictable, and very very funny.

And funny it is, especially when presented by such a gifted writer. I know you know what I'm talking about when I say that most books--let's be honest--we start because we think they'll be fun to read but then finish because, well, because we should. This is especially true of non-fiction. Well, if you like Malcolm Gladwell and his rare gift of making you see the world in a different way, you're really going to dig Richard Conniff. He should be a household name.

You're going to get a kick out of this book. Seriously: you'll be having so much fun reading it, you'll feel guilty thinking that you're "supposed" to be reading something else.
11 people found this helpful
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Alan F.
4.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining trek, though perhaps not so light-hearted
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2009
The author has written the kind of book he was undoubtedly aiming at: a light mix of believe-it-or-not anecdotes about rich people and believe-it-or-not biological observations, organized into a loose structure that explores both the cultural and sociological aspects of individual themes (display by grandstanding, display by muted extravagance, and so on) each explored for the length of a chapter. I didn't put up much of a fight against the overall thesis -- that it should be possible to use the same techniques and theories to explore the behavior of very wealthy people that are used to study exotic animals -- so I wasn't caught by surprise that the approach basically worked.

Conniff is a good writer. Sometimes he seemed to work too hard to force a reaction from the reader, but more often he made me laugh with an unexpected wry observation. He had the good sense to keep himself mostly out of the picture after the introduction and allow us to focus on his "prey". As for the rigor of his scientific descriptions, however, I was disappointed to find that he mischaracterized the gist of Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene," claiming that Dawkins talked about individuals trying to maximize their genes' propagation. In fact, Dawkins' novel perspective is that alleles (variant forms of a gene) can be viewed as trying to propagate themselves, albeit not in a conscious or goal-oriented way. Conniff is by no means the first to misquote Dawkins' theories, but I would expect better from a scientist than this kind of laziness. In the same way that you tend to distrust a newspaper in general when you read an article it publishes about your next-door neighbor and you see that the reporter got key facts wrong, I didn't feel as though I could rely a hundred percent on Conniff's statements about the work of scientists I was unfamiliar with. On the other hand, a certain amount of skepticism in approaching any popular science writer is probably a good thing. It should also be said that the book was well edited and revealed no noticeable typos or awkward wording, which has not been the case with a number of books I've read recently.

Conniff does not dwell to any great extent on "what it all means" in a political or ethical sense, but even his passing references to unhappy wives (such as Consuelo Vanderbilt, a virtual prisoner of her estate), frustrated suitors (such as the roughly 80% of beta males in some species who never mate), and squandered beauty (the classic hunting lodge torn down to build Blenheim Palace) mean that you're best off if you can distance yourself from the actual suffering caused by the excess and belligerence of the alpha humans and non-humans alike. While Conniff briefly suggests that there might be a negative environmental impact of tearing down enormous mansions to produce even bigger ones, he doesn't quantify it. Here and there he cites an example of a wasteful private jet trip (5500 gallons of fuel to take Elvis Presley to Denver and back for a peanut butter, jelly, and bacon sandwich, or $100,000 for a producer to take friends down to the Galapagos to see the filming of a nature documentary for a few hours), but he doesn't delve into the overall impact of such behavior.

Conniff ends the book with a sort of "how-to" epilogue with guidelines for how to act like a rich person. I see that he has expanded upon this theme in later books. With such guidelines as "move ruthlessly and without warning against your superiors", I'm not so sure that I particularly want to. But if the purpose of the book is to allow its readers, most of whom will probably not be rich, a brief laugh at wealthy humans and dominant animals before returning to their lives in the middle or bottom of the pack, it succeeds.
2 people found this helpful
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wegenerb
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book.
Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2023
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I bought this for a friend, he LOVES it.
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Alice Friedemann
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the funniest books I have ever read, my favorite book to give away
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2012
Verified Purchase
I keep buying and giving this book away, or I'd write a more detailed review, but I don't have it on my shelf right now.

If you have even an inkling of the naturalist in you -- if you've ever gone out birding, or read the plaques about plants at a botanic garden, or have a science degree, you will be even more amused.

"Lifestyles of the rich and famous" doesn't show or say anything about how boring, how coddled, or how shallow many in the elite are.

I've read thousands of books, my energyskeptic booklist is just a small subset, and this book is one of my favorites among the thousands I've read. Entertaining, brilliant, funny, interesting, you'll wish Richard Coniff were your best friend so you could continue to hang out with him after you finish reading this delightful book.
5 people found this helpful
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Jos Dujardin
3.0 out of 5 stars Amusing
Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2021
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The perspective provided on the subspecies “homo sapiens fortunatissimo” is amusing and consolating to read for the subspecies “homo sapiens ordinalis”. As a reader you wonder why there is sometimes so much focus on one topic ( the author for sure likes Blenheim castle and all family history around it) and on the other hand you wonder why some of the most well known examples of interbreeding, the Habsburgs, are not mentioned. A funny book that makes you conclude that we are just another kind of animal.
One person found this helpful
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M. Schulman
5.0 out of 5 stars Conniff at his best: An excellent (and very funny) read
Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2011
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Richard Conniff is the sort of author that makes you want to run out and buy every book he's ever written and then immediately go a vacation just to read them. Educated, witty, wry, and informative, this book is a perfect example of what makes Mr. Conniff's work such a delight to read. Part natural history and part social commentary, it is completely engaging from page one. Mr. Conniff brings his considerable talents as a naturalist and journalist to the task of making sense of the bizarre behaviors of the very rich. It's Mr. Conniff at his best: an excellent (and very funny) read. If you don't recognize yourself, someone you know, or at least someone you have read about, in this revealing and entertaining analysis then you must belong to an as-yet undiscovered species.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Ismael Garcia
2.0 out of 5 stars Not what I expected
Reviewed in Mexico on February 23, 2015
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This is not a serious study about the natural history of the rich, it has very few useful information.
It is just a informal talk about author's experience with some rich people.
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shorebird
4.0 out of 5 stars お金持ちの行動生態学
Reviewed in Japan on April 10, 2004
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行動生態学，進化心理学の視点からお金持ちの人たちの生態を描いてみようとしたノンフィクションもの．語り口はユーモアにあふれるが内容はかなりまじめ．
ややキワモノかもしれないがアメリカのハチャメチャなお金持達の逸話なんか面白かろうと思って手を出してみました．読んでみるとこれは掘り出し物でとっても面白い．
アメリカやイギリスのハチャメチャなお金持ちの生態がユーモアたっぷりに描かれているところも期待以上ですが，まじめな話として，お金持ちはライフスタイルのある面に関しては制限無くいろいろなことをおこなえる(特にアメリカのお金持ちはそういう感じ)ので，生物としての人間の本性があるとするならそれが非常に誇張したかたちで現れてくることが実に興味深い．
地位をめぐる洗練された争い方(寄付をするのでもどこにするのかでいろいろな含意やランクがあるとか・・・オペラは一番洗練されていないんだって)とか，とにかく危ないことをしたがる(これは性的なディスプレーとしてみるともっともうまく説明できる)とかによく現れます．著者が直接インタビューしているので生の面白い話し満載です．ブッシュファミリーてケネディファミリーの戦略の違いとかアスペンの環境保護運動は実はディスプレーコストを上げるための口実とかいろいろ楽しめます．
最近本書は｢金持ちと上手につきあう法｣として邦訳出版されましたのでそれについても一言
この邦訳は最低です．まず全体の半分ぐらいしか訳されていない．しかも章立ても改変し，中身もずたずたです．さらに一番面白いお金持ちのディテールがごそっと抜けています．こんな改悪本を｢抄訳｣と表示せず出版する出版元の良識を疑わせるようなできです．邦書については星二つです．
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