A part philosophical, part political text which instructs how to be the best kind of ruler according to the circumstances that lead up to your ascension as well as how to conduct your reign after, this is another book I have acquired for my banned books collection.
I don’t expect to ever be a ruler of any kind, but I can see how this could be helpful if I were to somehow fall into a position of power. Not every person at the head of a country or government deserves to be there, and certainly not all of those people are cut out for it. Whether you have inherited your power, taken it by force, or been nominated by others, Machiavelli outlines how to rule well so that ultimately you can remain in that position. I do believe that there are many people in power today who could take a lesson, or several, from this text.
I can see why this is on banned book lists. Even though it was written in the 1500s, it is still relevant today and the man makes many good points. He makes examples of many things that I think are obvious but apparently they are not so obvious to others. It is a book that gives people something to think about. It will make you question why we allow some glaringly terrible leaders to remain in power. It also gives examples of the things that can happen to bad leaders, which should hopefully have been enough to make those leaders who read this text want to do a good job. And while overly violent assassinations are not so common today, torture, beheading, and dismemberment, just to give a few examples, I would think that wanting to remain in the good eye of the public would be enough to make leaders want to try to do what is best for the people.
I think this is a good book to keep around, but I don’t see myself reading it in its entirety again. The chapters are short enough that you can go back and read only the passages that interest you or that you want to pull an example from. I did mark a few pages, mostly excerpts that I found had relevance to the current political climate in this country. There was one very small paragraph towards the end that irritated me, regarding beating women, but I tried to remind myself that this was written during a time when women’s rights were pretty much non-existent and to not get too worked up over it. I didn’t let that one passage change my entire opinion of the text, and notwithstanding that I would recommend reading The Prince as well as have you consider adding it to your physical book collection.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 