For close to five hundred years, the name Niccolo Machiavelli has held a place in history and in philosophy that has been hotly debated for centuries. Some say that Machiavelli is the true statesman and his books hold the key to the most efficient form of governing, while others call him a barbaric ...

Practically nothing is known of Nicolo Machiavelli before he became a minorofficial in the Florentine Government. His youth, however, was passedduring some of the most tumultuous years in the history of Florence. He wasborn the year that Lorenzo the Magnificent came to power, subverting thetraditi...

The History of European Political Ideas What are the aims of Machiavelli in the Prince? The Prince was an incredible book written by Machiavelli. Even though it was written in the 1500s, much of it can be applied in the world today. Many philosophers credit the ideas of Nicolo Machiavelli, be...

Niccolo Machiavelli is probably at one and the same time one of themost read and one of the most widely misunderstood of any of the politicalphilosophers of the renaissance in Europe whose ideas are still consideredrelevant and in active circulation today, indeed, as Leo Strauss has noted,ther...

CHAPTER I The setting for this book is in 1512 with the fall of Rome. The first chapter is titled "The kinds of principalities and the means by which they are acquired," because this is the first chapter and in order to understand the book you need to understand the most basic and ...