A review by ed_moore
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

informative medium-paced

3.5

Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ was actually a lot more enjoyable than I expected it to be. It is a discussion on what makes a good ruler, with modern and contemporary examples of leaders and why they succeeded and failed, almost serving as a guidebook to ruling a kingdom. It was quite engaging and was also really well translated and easy to follow, though wouldn’t say it was enlightening on a personal level as I can’t see myself ruling a 1500’s Kingdom anytime soon. He does also make ruling seem far more straight forward, following his principles, as I presume it was or was likely to be because of the nature of humans, they cannot be contained into a simple instruction-book list.  Aside from that it was an interesting insight into one mans very direct matter-of-fact mind on politics in his time and served well for what it was.