The Prince

The Prince

by Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince

The Prince

by Niccolò Machiavelli

Paperback(Mass Market Paperback - Reissue)

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Overview

Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power.  Astonishing in its candor The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince . . . a king . . . a president.  When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic.  In The Prince he envisioned would be unencumbered by ordinary ethical and moral values; his prince would be man and beast, fox and lion.  Today, this small sixteenth-century masterpiece has become essential reading for every student of government, and is the ultimate book on power politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780553212785
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 08/01/1984
Series: Bantam Classics Series
Edition description: Reissue
Pages: 176
Sales rank: 1,105,985
Product dimensions: 4.10(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range: 14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Peter Constantine, winner of the PEN Translation Prize and a National Translation Award, has earned wide acclaim for his translation of The Undiscovered Chekhov and of the complete works of Isaac Babel, as well as for his Modern Library translations, which include The Essential Writings of Machiavelli, Gogol’s Taras Bulba, Voltaire’s Candide, and Tolstoy’s The Cossacks.
 
Albert Russell Ascoli is Gladys Arata Terrill Distinguished Professor of Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and was awarded the Rome Prize for study at the American Academy in Rome.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
(Continues…)



Excerpted from "The Prince"
by .
Copyright © 1984 Niccolo Machiavelli.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Map
Introduction
Translator's Note
Selected Books
Machiavelli's Principal Works
Letter to the Magnificent Lorenzo de Medici ..... 1
I: How many kinds of principality there are and the ways in which they are acquired ..... 5
II: Hereditary principalities ..... 5
III: Composite principalities ..... 6
IV :Why the kingdom of Darius conquered by Alexander did not rebel against his successors after his death ..... 13
V: How cities or principalities which lived under their own laws should be administered after being conquered ..... 16
VI: New principalities acquired by one's own arms and prowess ..... 17
VII: New principalities acquired with the help of fortune and foreign arms ..... 20
VIII: Those who come to power by crime ..... 27
IX: The constitutional principality ..... 31
X: How the strength of every principality should be measured ..... 34
XI: Ecclesiastical principalities ..... 36
XII: Military organization and mercenary troops ..... 39
XIII: Auxiliary, composite, and native troops ..... 43
XIV: How a prince should organize his militia ..... 47
XV: The things for which men, and especially princes, are praised or blamed ..... 49
XVI: Generosity and parsimony ..... 51
XVII: Cruelty and compassion; and whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse ..... 53
XVIII: How princes should honour their word ..... 56
XIX: The need to avoid contempt and hatred ..... 58
XX: Whether fortresses and many of the other present-day expedients to which princes have recourse are useful or not ..... 67
XXI: How a prince must act to win honour ..... 71
XXII: A prince's personal staff ..... 75
XXIII: How flatterers must be shunned ..... 76
XXIV: Why the Italian princes have lost their states ..... 78
XXV: How far human affairs are governed by fortune, and how fortune can be opposed ..... 79
XXVI: Exhortation to liberate Italy from the barbarians ..... 82
Glossary of Proper Names ..... 86
Notes ..... 99

What People are Saying About This

John M. Najemy

I still consider Atkinson's translation of The Prince the best of the many . . . out there, especially with its extensive and extraordinarily valuable commentary. (John M. Najemy, Professor of History, Cornell University, 2007)

Mario Domandi

This edition of the The Prince has three distinct and disparate objectives: to provide a fresh and accurate translation; to analyze and find the roots of Machiavelli's thought; and to collect relevant extracts from other works by Machiavelli and some contemporaries, to be used to illuminate and explicate the text. The objectives are all reached with considerable and admirable skill. The reader senses Professor Atkinson's empathy and feeling for even the tiniest movements in Machiavelli's mind. Professor Atkinson has done a great service to students and teachers of Machiavelli, who should certainly welcome this as the most useful edition of The Prince in English. (Mario Domandi, Italica, 1978)

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