Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend

Though Barbara Oakley's Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend is ostensibly about Machiavellian behavior, it is also a testament to her intellectual ambition. The subheading is a clear pointer to this. Oakley attempts to synthesize a wide range of fields, behavior genetics, cognitive neuroscience, clinical psychology, diplomatic history, evolutionary psychology, economic history, along with heavy dollops of political and personal biography, to produce a portrait of how Machiavellian intelligence emerges from its biological substrate, develops, and impacts us on a personal and social level. With any such project there is bound to be some disappointment due to the limitations of what one can communicate and construct in about 400 pages of narrative. But the attempt still produces something of definite worth and intellectual value. A minor, but perhaps not trivial, observation is that the subheading itself is somewhat deceptive as ...