Audiobook7 hours
Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power
Written by Ross King
Narrated by Tim Reynolds
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
Part of the acclaimed Eminent Lives series, Machiavelli is a superb portrait of the brilliant and revolutionary political philosopher—history’s most famous theorist of “warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed”—and the age he embodied. Ross King, the New York Times bestselling author of Brunelleschi’s Dome, argues that the author of The Prince was a far more complex and sympathetic character than is often portrayed.
Author
Ross King
Ross King is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling and Brunelleschi's Dome as well as several novels. Born and raised in Canada, he lives outside Oxford, England.
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Reviews for Machiavelli
Rating: 3.8076923307692305 out of 5 stars
4/5
26 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very well written and read. Interesting and well paced. Curious that the author barely mentions that Machiavelli spent time cooped up with Cesare Borgia and Leonardo DaVinci in Imola - surely a significant and formative episode for all involved!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Starts slow with Machiavelli's rise to an important position in Florence and his various missions as sort of a roving emissary and troubleshooter, picks up in the middle with the intrigues as the Medici family comes back into power in Florence, then slows down again a bit at the end. Machiavelli deserves credit for keeping his head when so many others lost theirs. The descriptions of his other writings, such as some rather vulgar humorous plays, are interesting and King does a good job creating a sense of the turmoil of 16th century Italy with its constant wars and intrigues. Even the Pope was leading an army. On the other hand, King reports contemporary legends as fact, such as monster children being born and seen as a bad portent, when obviously things like that couldn't actually have happened. Not as interesting or compelling as his Brunelleschi's Dome, but it does make me want to go back and read the Prince again.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a very straightforward and accessible bio, one that emphasizes chronology and his life experiences with only occasional forays into his work. Anyone looking for more context on The Prince will find relatively little here (although some of the earlier chapters and the conclusion are interesting), but it's a vivid portrayal of the Italy that he inhabited, a place we now tend to see as fascinating, think of the art/architecture it produced, but too often forget was lawless, violent, and often terrifying as wars and disease (notably the newest arrival, syphilis) swept across it at frequent intervals. King also clearly identifies Machiavelli as the first humanist to write this kind of manual for rulers (we tend to forget this was a tradition going back to Thomas Aquinas, but good old Niccolo took a completely different perspective...) An excellent read for newcomers to Machiavelli, as it makes him human and not just the quasi-conspiratorial and sly manipulator he is perceived to be. I'm glad I read this; it will help me get back to Paul Strathern's [The Artist, the Philosopher and the Warrior], which is about the ways that the lives of Machiavelli, Cesare Borgia and Leonardo da Vinci overlapped and affected each other. The latter was good, but dense, and I bogged down in it, so plan to give it another try later this year. Meanwhile, this relatively thin bio is 4 stars.