Ryans On Politics (2012) presented the entire history of Western political thought in

two spirited and accessible volumes that emphasized the relevance of past political
thought to the challenges of the present. Here, he presents a brief and pithy summary
of the contributions of Niccol Machiavelli, a pivotal figure in modern political thought
who is nevertheless often misunderstood. The misunderstandings, suggests Ryan,
occur when we take the sixteenth-century Florentine writers works out of context, or
reduce them to epigrams (It is better to be feared than to be loved, and the like). The
Prince, Ryan reminds us, was part of a failed job application, written following the
collapse of Machiavellis cherished Florentine Republic. Machiavellis overall project,
he suggests, may not have been that of shocking the sensibilities of later ages but,
rather, reflecting upon the difficulties of instituting political order, whether princely or
republican. Ryans summary is accompanied by fairly substantial extracts from
Machiavellis key texts, allowing this book to serve as a teaching resource as well as
a concise and readable introduction to its subject. A similar work by Ryan on Aristotle
is reviewed above. --Brendan Driscoll

Review
A brief and pithy summary of the contributions of Niccolo Machiavelli, a pivotal figure
in modern political thought who is nevertheless often misunderstood. Ryans
summary is accompanied by fairly substantial extracts from Machiavellis key texts,
allowing this book to serve as a teaching resource as well as a concise and readable
introduction to its subject.
- Booklist

Alan Ryan captures Machiavellis hold on the modern moral imagination when he
says, The staying power of The Prince comes fromits insistence on the need for a
clear-sighted appreciation of how men really are as distinct from the moralizing
claptrap about how they ought to be. This moral clarity remains bracing in an era like
our own, when politicians hide the necessary ruthlessness of political life behind the
rhetoric of family values and Christian principles . We are still drawn to Machiavelli
because we sense how impatient he was with the equivalent flummery in his own
day, and how determined he was to confront a problem that preoccupies us too: when
and how much ruthlessness is necessary in the world of politics.
- Michael Ignatieff, The Atlantic