Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince: Second Edition. United Kingdom: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
If you want to know what early modern political thought is all about and you only have time for one text, this is it.
Did you ever wonder what it means when someone is called Machiavellian?
The political scheming Machiavelli witnessed in Florence was insane, and he was reading Livy, trying to scour the annals of Roman history to find guidance.
Read this to meditate on the relationship between the style and substance of a text.
