An Unlikely Prince: The Life and Times of Machiavelli

An Unlikely Prince: The Life and Times of Machiavelli
ISBN-10
0306819082
ISBN-13
9780306819087
Category
Biography & Autobiography
Pages
360
Language
English
Published
2010-06-29
Publisher
Da Capo Press
Author
Niccolo Capponi

Description

In this compelling new biography, historian Niccolò Capponi frees Machiavelli (1469–1527) from centuries of misinterpretation. Exploring the Renaissance city of Florence, where Machiavelli lived, Capponi reveals the man behind the legend. A complex portrait of Machiavelli emerges—at once a brilliantly skillful diplomat and a woefully inept liar; a sharp thinker and an impractical dreamer; a hardnosed powerbroker and a risk-taking gambler; a calculating propagandist and an imprudent jokester. Capponi's intimate portrait of Machiavelli reveals his behavior as utterly un-Machiavellian, his vision of the world as limited by his very provincial outlook. In the end, Machiavelli was frustrated by his own political failures and utterly baffled by the success of his book The Prince.

Other editions

Similar books