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Five hundred years after his death, Niccolò Machiavelli still draws an astonishing range of contradictory characterizations. Was he a friend of tyrants? An ardent republican loyal to Florence’s free institutions? The father of political realism? A revolutionary populist? A calculating rationalist? A Renaissance humanist? A prophet of Italian unification? A theorist of mixed government? A forerunner to authoritarianism? The master of the dark arts of intrigue?
This book provides a vivid and engaging introduction to Machiavelli’s life and works that sheds new light on his originality and relevance. Gabriele Pedullà—a leading Italian expert and acclaimed writer—offers fresh readings of the Florentine thinker’s most famous writings, The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, as well as lesser-known texts. A new and often surprising Machiavelli emerges: one closer to his time but also better suited to inform our own. Pedullà’s portrait of Machiavelli highlights his close attention to social and emotional bonds, staunch opposition to oligarchy, keen awareness of the economic side of power dynamics, and strong preference for history over philosophy as a guide for leaders.
This book recovers the excitement Machiavelli roused in his first readers for a twenty-first-century audience, capturing his capacity to provoke, both then and now, with unconventional ideas and startling insights.
— Axel Honneth, Jack B. Weinstein Professor of the Humanities, Columbia University
Pedullà's On Niccolo Machiavelli will stand as the single most important introductory study of Machiavelli in any language. Covering biographical details and historical context as well as offering concise and astute analyses of Machiavelli's major writings, it is a work of great insight, depth, and originality.
— John P. McCormick, author of Reading Machiavelli: Scandalous Books, Suspect Engagements, and the Virtue of Populist Politics
An immensely rich analysis of Machiavelli’s achievement that integrates his political and literary writings with his life and view of religion. More than that, it goes on to explain his contested legacy from the time of his death to his present relevance today, making it quite unrivaled in its scope and appeal to a global and multifocused readership.
— Alison Brown, author of Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici and the Crisis of Renaissance Italy
Pedulla’s book serves as an excellent primer for Machiavelli’s work, offering the key through which to interpret his most controversial ideas.
But even grizzled veterans will find interest in Pedullà’s portrait of the Secretary as a political animal who was also a non-conformist and a critic of conventional wisdom.
Pedullà's valuable contribution to the "Core Knowledge" series from Columbia College will allow students to see the complex paradoxes of the mind of Machiavelli.
With this new short introduction, Pedullà successfully manages to popularize his approach to the Florentine secretary, while carefully taking the most recent scholarship into account.
It is simply the best introductory study of the great Florentine secretary in any language.
The distinguishing feature of this introduction is the attention it pays to context, that is, to Machiavelli situated among his Renaissance contemporaries and to the innovative literary forms he employed.
Pedullà’s volume is primarily aimed at providing college students and general readers with an introduction to Machiavelli, but it accomplishes more than that. It also offers food for thought to specialists.
Preface: The Thinker of a Thousand Faces
1. From Humanism to Politics
2. The People’s Prince
3. In the Garden with the Romans
4. Comeback Kid
5. Beyond
Chronology
Further Readings
Index