Download Machiavelli: A Biography, by Miles Unger
Do you ever recognize guide Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger Yeah, this is a really intriguing e-book to review. As we told recently, reading is not type of commitment activity to do when we have to obligate. Reviewing should be a practice, a good habit. By reviewing Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger, you can open the new world as well as obtain the power from the world. Everything can be gained via guide Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger Well briefly, publication is very effective. As what we provide you right here, this Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger is as one of reviewing book for you.
Machiavelli: A Biography, by Miles Unger
Download Machiavelli: A Biography, by Miles Unger
Idea in picking the very best book Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger to read this day can be acquired by reading this page. You could discover the very best book Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger that is marketed in this world. Not just had actually guides released from this country, however additionally the various other countries. And also now, we intend you to review Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger as one of the reading products. This is only one of the very best books to gather in this website. Check out the page and search the books Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger You could locate lots of titles of guides offered.
Maintain your way to be right here as well as read this page finished. You can enjoy searching the book Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger that you truly describe get. Here, obtaining the soft documents of the book Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger can be done conveniently by downloading in the link web page that we supply here. Naturally, the Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger will be yours faster. It's no need to get ready for guide Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger to obtain some days later on after purchasing. It's no have to go outside under the heats at middle day to head to the book establishment.
This is a few of the benefits to take when being the member as well as obtain the book Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger here. Still ask exactly what's different of the various other site? We provide the hundreds titles that are created by recommended authors as well as authors, all over the world. The link to purchase as well as download and install Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger is likewise quite simple. You might not find the complicated site that order to do even more. So, the method for you to get this Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger will be so easy, will not you?
Based on the Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger specifics that our company offer, you may not be so confused to be right here and also to be member. Obtain now the soft documents of this book Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger as well as save it to be all yours. You saving could lead you to evoke the convenience of you in reading this book Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger Even this is types of soft documents. You can truly make better possibility to get this Machiavelli: A Biography, By Miles Unger as the recommended book to read.
A “captivating biography of Italian philosopher and playwright”*—Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince—whose writings have outraged and inspired generations of readers.
Niccolò Machiavelli is the most influential political writer of all time. His name has become synonymous with cynical scheming and the selfish pursuit of power, but the real Machiavelli, says Miles Unger, was a deeply humane and perceptive writer whose controversial theories were a response to the violence and corruption he saw around him.
Machiavelli’s philosophy was shaped by the tumultuous age in which he lived, an age of towering geniuses and brutal tyrants. His first political mission was to spy on the fire-and-brimstone preacher Savonarola. He was on intimate terms with Leonardo and Michelangelo. As a diplomat, he matched wits with the corrupt Pope Alexander VI and his son, the infamous Cesare Borgia, whose violent career served as a model for The Prince. Analyzing their successes and failures, Machiavelli developed his revolutionary approach to power politics. His famous book is a guide that is based on the world as it is, not as it should be.
Miles Unger has relied on original Italian sources as well as his own deep knowledge of Florence in writing this fascinating and authoritative account of a genius whose work remains as relevant today as when he wrote it.
- Sales Rank: #459033 in Books
- Published on: 2012-06-12
- Released on: 2012-06-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.30" w x 6.12" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 416 pages
Review
"A captivating biography of Italian philosopher and playwright Niccolo Machiavelli. . . . Lively, well-researched portrait of a master political strategist."
--"Kirkus Reviews "
"Unger skillfully narrates the details of a life led during one of the greatest periods of artistic, political, and literary activity in Western history. . . . [He] does a wonderful job of bringing Machiavelli to life."
--Alan Wolfe, "The New Republic
"
"This is a superb biography, of interest to anybody -- not just management consultants -- trying to get along in the contemporary world. . . . Unger is superb at providing context, so readers grasp how Machiavelli's thinking was received during his lifetime, how it has been interpreted/misinterpreted through the centuries, and how it offers meaning in the 21st century."
--Steve Weinberg, "USA Today
"
"Excellent. . . . wonderfully readable."
--Jessica Warner, "National Post"
"A wonderful biography. . . . Unger includes details you didn't hear in World History 101, details that make fascinating reading and should put the book on the list of any history buff."
--John Monaghan, "The Providence Journal-Bulletin
"
"For most people, 'Machiavellian' means ruthless, the application of power without remorse. Thanks to a fascinating portrait by Miles J. Unger, the real Machiavelli comes across the centuries as something more: a man with whom many of us might like to spend a few hours in rich conversation."
--Repps Hudson, "St. Louis Post-Disptach
"
"An excellent analysis of the influential thinker and his renowned writings."
--"Booklist
"
"A thoughtful and well-informed study of the life of the Florentine diplomat and government bureaucrat. . . . Unger presents a side of the cynical and jaded diplomat rarely known by even those who had read Machiavelli's notorious collection of practical and often amoral advice to the prospective ruler."
--Karl Rove
About the Author
Miles J. Unger, a contributing writer to The New York Times and former managing editor of Art New England, is an art historian and the author of Magnifico, a biography of Lorenzo de’Medici. He lives in Massachusetts.
Most helpful customer reviews
40 of 46 people found the following review helpful.
A disappointment
By Bookfiend
I love biographies of historical and political figures, and was excited to read about this new biography of Machiavelli. In the past two or three years a number of Machiavelli's life-and- times books have been published. The ones I've bought are good reads, but they all tend to cover pretty much the same ground. Over and over we get the same old spicy bits of Machiavelli's correspondence, his encounters with bad Borgias and shifty Medicis, woven in with dollops of poetry. Most biographers seem to have more to say about Machiavelli's colorful times than about the man himself. I'd hoped this book would be different, but it's not. I learned absolutely nothing new. It's as if the author just read a selection of other biographies then rewrote the Machiavelli story in his own style, without adding any new insights of his own. Despite the academic-looking bibliography, the book's biggest weakness is its failure to engage with Machiavelli's ideas. Unger is a journalist, and doesn't seem to have the intellectual background (or interest) needed to confront some of the great mysteries about Machiavelli: how devoted was he to republican ideals, and why does the Discourses seem to contradict the Prince? Unger goes for the easiest answers to these questions. He basically recycles old cliches about Machiavelli's opportunism and cynicism. He insists that Machiavelli had no consistent system of thought, although there's not much evidence that he's actually read enough of Machiavelli's writings to be sure of that. He hardly mentions two of Machiavelli's longest and most important works, the Art of War and the Florentine Histories. There are other popular biographies that try to get past stereotypes in their discussions of what Machiavelli thought, even though their authors are not scholars. If you read this one before the others, enjoy the storyline, but take all the confident claims about Machiavelli's ideas with a big pinch of salt.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Good but definitely flawed
By Jason Goetz
With most biographies of literary artists, there are three major categories in which the author can succeed or fail: 1) in giving context to the life and times of the author in terms of how they shaped his perceptions; 2) in dealing with the ideas that the author himself discusses in his works; and 3) in examining the author's works and legacy in the train of other great works of similar or equal merit.
I feel quite strongly that this biography succeeds greatly in the first, but has significant limitations with the other two, aspects of this approach. The context which Unger gives on Machiavelli's life, on the convoluted geopolitics of Italy and Western Europe at the time, on the social and religious worlds he lived in, and on the Florentine political system are all magnificent. For clarifying many aspects of Florentine Histories alone, I give Unger a ton of credit. But when he gets into the realm of political theory, Machiavelli's strongest field, Unger falters. Repeatedly he conflates the terms democracy and republic, and he fails to distinguish between different kinds of representative systems. To a careless reader this may not mean much, but to a sophisticated and engaged readers of Machiavelli's works--especially his great Discourses on Livy--this means a great deal. Is Machiavelli closer to Rousseau, or to Locke? To Jefferson, or to Madison? If he has no fixed moral "principles"--and certainly it is clear he does not, just as all four of those do not--then which route does he take? (He also did not mention Milton and the English Civil War at all, thereby avoiding mentioning the first consistent attempted application of Machiavelli's ideas on a nation-state level in Europe.)
Additionally, Unger's discussion of the ancients and of political theory before Machiavelli was grossly distorted. While it is understood that many of the ancients did not participate in politics themselves as bureaucrats, it is by no means clear, as Unger seems to establish for himself, that they were removed from the political sphere and could only focus on "ideal" government in an impractical manner. Like Machiavelli, many of the ancients' heads were on the chopping blocks, so to speak, when their ideas went out of favor; Socrates was murdered under the pretense of "justice," Aristotle was exiled, Xenophon was exiled, Thucydides was exiled, Boethius was handed the same fate (if more violent) as Socrates, as was Cicero (former consul and Senator), Tacitus was a Roman Senator, and so on. It is also by no means accurate that they were "simpler" than Machiavelli or that their ideas were too "moral." Their lines of thought were different, but, especially in the cases of Tacitus and Thucydides, they laid the foundation for Machiavelli's by giving him lots of factual material with subtle and understated interpretations which he would later adopt. In order to understand with any clarity where Machiavelli's works fit in and where they are different, it is important to understand the depth and range of the political philosophy of antiquity, and I felt that here that wasn't clear.
One last quibble before I go: Unger repeatedly reuses the same quotations, which I hate because it means that the book could have been more concisely organized around those quotations themselves, in which case they'd only need to be placed once and then fully examined, as opposed to analyzing a fragment of one quote, then moving on to another, then to a third, then going back to the second, then back to the third, and back to the first, and back to the third again, and so on. That's a huge structural flaw--or if not a huge flaw in evidentiary application--and ought to be taken note of. On top of what I already said about it, it also means he's not using as much evidence as he should, and is falling back on the same pieces of evidence in places where others might be better served or where other evidence might contradict what he's already used. I really do not like that.
22 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
Definitely worth the read!
By JamesCameron
In addition TO JUNEBUG'S review above, Unger has written MACHIAVELLI in a style that is neither myopic nor sketchy in nature. That is, some biographers get so bogged down into so much detail the s/he loses his/her readers' interest because of the excess and unnecessary details of the intended person's life. Similarly, some biographies are written in a watered-down style that, after one finished with the book, one wonders if this subject has been adequately covered within the confines of one book, and the reader gets an empty feeling in the stomach, saying, "Is this all there is?".
Not so with Unger. His style is flowing, with complex yet understandable ideas expressed in his sentences. This was an extremely complicated time in Florence's political life, and that of entire Italy, but yet the author presents all of the action in a clear and understandable manner. The reader really feels like s/he is a part of what is going on at that time.
I bought this book in a Kindle format, which was a mistake, and I am going to buy a hardback copy of the same book since it is very much worthy of many re-readings if one sincerely want to under this sincere, patriotic but complicated and contradictory person who lived during those turbulent times in Renaissance Italy.
This is the first review of this type that I have written (and it probably reads like it too), but, being a fan of various periods of history over the years, this was one book that placed pretty much everything at that time in its true historical place.
Absolutely worth the read!
Machiavelli: A Biography, by Miles Unger PDF
Machiavelli: A Biography, by Miles Unger EPub
Machiavelli: A Biography, by Miles Unger Doc
Machiavelli: A Biography, by Miles Unger iBooks
Machiavelli: A Biography, by Miles Unger rtf
Machiavelli: A Biography, by Miles Unger Mobipocket
Machiavelli: A Biography, by Miles Unger Kindle
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar