The Prince (Pocket Classics) By Niccolo Machiavelli Paperback

amazing

different cover. We'd like to get what we buy. also chapter 13 and 14 are published upside down.

Great

You already know how good this book is....

This is a great narration, clear, consistent for the most part (with possible exception of chapter 24, in which there is a real change in quality, although this dip in quality is not for the entire chapter or remaining chapters), there may be some mispronunciation of Italian names and place names, I am not sure myself, what I did notice was not that significant. There are 32 or there about sections to the MP3 CD which makes it sufficient to fill a number of journeys if you are listening to this in a car during a commute as I was. I think this is excellent and at a really good affordable price too. The content, well, the content is by Niccolo Machavelli, its THE book that he's known for, even if he did write narratives on warfare, the history of the Roman republics (referenced in the first chapter of this book as he explains he dealt with the topic of principalities here and the alternatives elsewhere). In this book Machavelli writes a guide to realpolitik and statecraft for a prince, this is how to seize power, exercise power and keep a hold of power for posterity. The central point of the book is similar to that of Mandeville's Fable of The Bees, that other authors writing about virtues, good character, good conduct are all misleading and ruinous, at least for anyone in public office or government. Instead, the business of government is perfidious mendacity, no designs for improvement are wise. According to Machavelli people are wicked and can not be made otherwise by how they are governed, though they could well become worse by being indulged too much. He has a lot of really great one liners to illustrate it, such as men being quicker to forget their fathers than their inheritance/legacies if they are lost, if any injury should be done to anyone it should be great enough that you need to fear revenge. There are interesting meditations on fortune, who can command fortune, who cant, Machavelli tries to explain how all is not fortune, the actions people take matter, he believes following his recommendations matter, but also that fortune has a role to play too. I have read elsewhere this has something to do with being a virtuoso, being ready to "ride that wave" or use opportunities as they present themselves. Finally, a big part of Machavelli's idea is the "great men" theory of history, rather than developments in production, distribution, technology it is the greatness of leaders and governors that matters. It is stories of the great men of history that Machavelli uses to illustrate all his points, in the final chapters he describes his archetypical Prince and supplies a number of witty quotations. These are excellent and are worth the cover price alone, I could listen and relisten to them alone and have tried to commit a few to memory.

I love this tiny edition of The Prince. It fits in my small handbag perfectly—you know, for those never-ending situations when you need to quote Machiavelli precisely. The book has really nice black and white illustrations and the fore-edges are a lovely silver colour.

Me so happi

This review isn't about the writings of Nicolo Machiavelli, but I find his political analysis of principalities very insightful and interesting, so "The Prince" is a book definitely worth reading. That being said, get a better edition than this as to not spoil the experience of reading this priceless literary work. The words are way too close to the spine, which requires you to pull the pages appart or tilt the book. Reading it while holding the book in one hand without laying it down is uncomfortable because of that lack of a margin in the middle. The formatting is also weird, especially the notes and explanations, but I'm willing to glance over that. The whole edition just appears to be very unprofessional and aesthetically lacking. Spacing between chapters is also weird, and I noticed that there are sometimes two entire white pages with only a single line on them, which along with a very wide spacing of the notes that looks like they were made by someone with a very rudamentary knowledge of text editors, is a waste of paper. I'll admit that at least the paper quality is good, but it's wasted on such poor formatting and aesthetics. The final nail in the coffin that shows just how unprofessional and how little effort has been put into it is that the table of contents has wrong pages assigned to each chapter. The table of contents looks abhorent. One chapter, "Concerning the way in which the strength of all principalities ought to be measured," which is the 10th chapter has its '1' missing, making it a '0' chapter, and in the table of contents it's off by 7 pages - both of those things motivated me to write this review to save others from this edition. Also, I shouldn't need to turn a page to read the notes and those notes take up way too much space. The only nice looking thing about this book is the cover and nothing more. I don't know whether it's the limitation of the press they're using, but the pictures (since this edition has pictures in it, though I don't know what their purpose is) are such low quality that you can see the individual pixels. It's cheap, I know, but the lack of effort is blatant, and it would be better if at least a little bit more of it had been put into it. If this edition is 'gold' then it's only gold on the outside and unfortunately all the gold falls away like a wrapper the moment you open it.