This is excellence. The translation is fluent and clear. This book should be read in schools, on streets, at houses, shortly everywhere and everyday. A very honest and realistic account of how politics actually works, very differently from how we all desperately expect and wish it to work. I shall say no more because the writing on Niccolo Machiavelli's grave already gives an answer to my passionate desire to praise this gentleman: TANTO NOMINI NULLUM PAR ELOGIUM (with such a name, there is no need for eulogy).
This fascinating, elegant book was based on a terrible time for Italy when the Borgias ruled the Vatican, blood engulfed the peninsula and Leonardo was managing to keep out of trouble and was painting the Last Supper. Machiavelli deeply admired the rampaging Cesare Borgia and describes him as "a man of great courage and high intentions, and he could not have conducted himself other than the way he did". Five hundred years later, Italy still reels under factionalism and mistrust and Silvio Berlusconi would be described by some in the same terms that Machiavelli used for the ruthless Borgia. To admire such people, Machiavelli was realistic rather than amoral. As he says, "the fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous". He is telling us that we are naive if we think we leave ourselves open to other people. Being kind and generous, he explains, can get you into big trouble (and five hundred years ago that could mean ending up dead). As he says: "one can be hated just as much for good deeds as for evil ones". Recently tortured and imprisoned himself, Machiavelli knew the risks that he was writing about. But despite all that he writes in a chipper tone. As has been said before, The Prince could serve as a guide to modern office politics as well as being a survival guide in blood-thirsty times.
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