Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince in 1513, after he lost his post as a Florentine diplomat and was sent into exile on his country estate. He had spent fourteen years serving the republic, watching kings, popes and warlords up close, and he set down what that experience had taught him about how states are won, held and lost. It circulated in manuscript for years and was not printed until 1532, after his death.
Short, blunt and brilliantly argued, it is the founding text of modern political thinking, and its author's name became a byword for cunning. Read it as he meant it: a practical handbook for rulers, drawing on the Italy of his day and on ancient examples, written with a clarity that has kept readers arguing for five centuries. W. K. Marriott's 1908 translation is the one presented here.
