The Prince - Paperback
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The Prince is Machiavelli's short handbook on taking power and holding it, in the W. K. Marriott translation from the Renaissance original.
Good to know
It is short, and it is blunt. Machiavelli writes about how power is actually taken, held, threatened and lost, with none of it softened, which is why the book still unsettles people five centuries on.
Why it still gets read
Review after review lands on the same idea, that this is a study of human nature wearing political theory as a coat. It broke with the Catholic and scholastic teaching of its day by putting what works ahead of what ought to be.
From the publisher
The Prince is a political treatise by the Italian diplomat, historian and political theorist Niccol Machiavelli. The Prince is sometimes claimed to be one of the first works of modern philosophy, especially modern political philosophy, in which the effective truth is taken to be more important than any abstract ideal.
It was also in direct conflict with the dominant Catholic and scholastic doctrines of the time concerning how to consider politics and ethics.
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