Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes ANNOTATION
An account of daily life in a community of chimpanzees that reveals sexual rivalries and complex political strategies.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
This extraordinary account of schmoozing, scheming, and consensus building among the chimpanzees of a large zoo colony in Arnhem, The Netherlands, attracted attention. Throughout this revised edition - which features a new gallery of color photographs along with a new introduction and epilogue - de Waal expands and updates his story of the Arnhem colony and its continuing political upheavals. We learn the fate of many memorable characters and meet the colony's current leaders and their allies. The new edition remains a detailed and thoroughly engrossing account - of sexual rivalries and coalitions, of actions governed by intelligence rather than instinct - and it reaffirms the complex bond between humans and their closest living relatives. As we watch the chimpanzees of Arnhem behave in ways we recognize from Machiavelli (and from the nightly news), de Waal reminds us again that the roots of politics are older than humanity.
SYNOPSIS
First published in 1982, "Chimpanzee Politics" helped to establish the now accepted view that the higher animals experience desires, intentions, and even consciousness. With this edition, de Waal brings his revealing study of primate politics up to date. 147 illustrations. 22 pp. in color. 216 pp.
FROM THE CRITICS
Laurence Shames - (Business Month)
Schmoozing. Scheming. Consensus building. You won't glean these management techniques from any business text. But you can't run your company without them. Take it from the apes . . . The author demonstrates that chimps are, in the broadest sense, political.
Adrienne Zihlman - ( American Journal of Primatology)
When I first read this book, I was in Dar es Salaam with Jane Goodall. I had just returned from observing chimpanzees for two weeks at Gombe. After the real life experience, I expected a book about chimpanzee behavior and at a zoo, at that to make rather dull reading. But I was in for a surprise. De Waal's Chimpanzee Politics is as much fun as a tree full of wild chimps.
Roger Masters - (Politics and the Life Sciences)
Frans de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics is a classic. It should be required reading in any undergraduate course which purports to deal with human nature from an evolutionary perspective.
Robert Hinde - (Times Literary Supplement)
Precise but eminently readable and indeed exciting . . . This excellent book achieves the dual goal which eludes so many writers about animal behavior it will both fascinate the non-specialist and be seen as an important contribution to science.
Booknews
Reprint. Originally published in 1982 (Harper & Row). Emphasis is on social interactions in daily life. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
Even more enlightening than Machiavelli's The Prince this book describes power takeovers and social organizations in a chimpanzee colony . . . I'll never look at academic or corporate politics the same way — Jim Collins
The best book ever written on the social life of apes in captivity . . . The author has that special empathetic insight into the mind of the chimpanzee which is shared by few but can somehow be recognized by many. — (William McGrew, Human Ethology Newsletter)
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