Judged by population size and geographic distribution, Homo sapiens has clearly been the most successful of the more than three hundred primate species currently living on our planet. It’s no secret that our big brains and intelligence helped facilitate our success. By the same criteria of population size and distribution, the second most successful primate is a monkey called the rhesus macaque. The rhesus macaque, however, is not one of the smartest primates. Other primates – the great apes - have bigger brains and are smarter than rhesus macaques, but unfortunately they are all on the brink of extinction. So being smart is not by itself a guarantee of success in this corner of the universe. There are different kinds of intelligence and different ways to use it.

Macachiavellian Intelligence is about rhesus macaques and what they have in common with people. The product of more than twenty years of studying these fascinating creatures, Macachiavellian Intelligence caricatures a society that is as much human as monkey, with hierarchies and power struggles that would impress Machiavelli himself. High-status macaques, for instance, maintain their rank through deft uses of violence and manipulation, while altruism is almost unknown and relationships are perpetually subject to the cruel laws of the market. Throughout this eye-opening account, Maestripieri weds his thorough knowledge of macaque behavior to his abiding fascination with human society and motivations. The result is a book unlike any other, one that draws on economics as much as evolutionary biology, politics as much as literature and popular culture.

Macachiavellian Intelligence contains more facts about monkeys than about people, but the book is really more about people than monkeys. Why rhesus macaques are the way they are is an interesting question, but the fact that human beings often act like rhesus macaques is even more interesting.  Charles Darwin once wrote “He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke”. Without taking anything away from baboons, understanding why rhesus macaques behave the way they do may tell us something about human nature, metaphysics, and perhaps the future as well. By the time human beings start the global nuclear war that will destroy our civilization, there won’t be any great apes left for Earth to become the Planet of the Apes. But chances are there will still be plenty of rhesus macaques around.