The Prince (Collins Classics) - Softcover

Machiavelli, Niccolo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007420072 ISBN 13: 9780007420070

Publisher: William Collins, 2011

Synopsis

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

‘We have declared before that it is not only expedient but necessary for a prince to take care his foundations be good, otherwise his fabric will be sure to fail.’

Considered one of the first works of modern philosophy, Machiavelli’s The Prince is an intense study on the nature of power and the course it should take when ruling a country and expresses the author’s strong and unyielding ideals and beliefs on using force rather than law to achieve your aims.

Responsible for the widely-used phrase ‘Machiavellian’, with all of its negative connotations, his extreme treatise remains a classic text to this day.

About this title

Review:

"ÝMachiavelli¨ can still engage our attention with remarkable immediacy, and this cannot be explained solely by the appeal of his ironic observations on human behaviour. Perhaps the most important thing is the way he can compel us to reflect on our own priorities and the reasoning behind them; it is this intrusion into our own defenses that makes reading him an intriguing experience. As a scientific exponent of the political art Machiavelli may have had few followers; it is as a provocative rhetorician that he has had his real impact on history." -from the Introduction by Dominic Baker-Smith

"From the Hardcover edition."

"[Machiavelli] can still engage our attention with remarkable immediacy, and this cannot be explained solely by the appeal of his ironic observations on human behaviour. Perhaps the most important thing is the way he can compel us to reflect on our own priorities and the reasoning behind them; it is this intrusion into our own defenses that makes reading him an intriguing experience. As a scientific exponent of the political art Machiavelli may have had few followers; it is as a provocative rhetorician that he has had his real impact on history." -from the Introduction by Dominic Baker-Smith

[Machiavelli] can still engage our attention with remarkable immediacy, and this cannot be explained solely by the appeal of his ironic observations on human behaviour. Perhaps the most important thing is the way he can compel us to reflect on our own priorities and the reasoning behind them; it is this intrusion into our own defenses that makes reading him an intriguing experience. As a scientific exponent of the political art Machiavelli may have had few followers; it is as a provocative rhetorician that he has had his real impact on history. from the Introduction by Dominic Baker-Smith"

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Collins
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0007420072
• ISBN 13: 9780007420070
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160