The Prince is a truly great book on executive leadership and statecraft.
Don’t believe the negative hype from those who most likely never read it (or at least failed to understand it).
Filed under: Pop Culture Stuff | Tagged: wordle |
Flickr Photos
-
-
4 Responses
Leave a Reply
Recent Comments
PurpleSlog - The Future Will Be Kludged 
The term “Machiavellian” when used to describe a person is used usually in a negative connotation. A real shame, maybe I’ll send a few copies to my state senators to hopefully increase competency. John Quincy Adams supposedly carried the book everywhere he went his whole presidency. Any thought of Robert Greene’s book 48 Laws of Power?
I’m slightly obsessed with Greene’s books, as I’ve always done the opposite of what Greene says to do e.g. run my mouth off at people, jump straight into the fray etc. etc.
I have a whole bunch of personal notebooks based on Greene’s 48 laws preface. Especially the foundational skills he lays out in the preface where he exhorts the need to build emotional control, deception skills, patience, and a whole bunch of other skills before applying the 48 laws, or more correctly, 48 indirect strategies. This foundation is something a lot of readers (see amazon reviewers) seem to miss, as they complain that the 48 laws are ‘impractical’ to use.
My favorite personal notebook is my “big book of nots”. Like Greene says in the preface: power comes from what you do not allow yourself to get into. So I created a notebook full of “do nots”. Kinda like a reverse maxims, or an anti-self help guide.
Agreed. An excellent book, and Machiavelli comes across as a guy I’d love to have coffee with.
The preface to the translation I read said that much of the negative hype came from the Wars of Religion that started some years after, where Machiavelli was seen by Protestants as explaining the behavior of Catholic princes, and by Catholics as an example of what needed to be destroyed by the Counter-Reformation.
I liked Greene’s power (it is time for a re-read).
I have had his “war” book on my to-read pile for awhile now and should get to it.