Presents a comparative and textual exploration of Gramsci's interpretation of Machiavelli's political analyses. This valuable contribution to our understanding of Gramsci includes a comparison of the major Machiavellian ideas such as the nature of political knowledge, the new principality, the concept of the people, and the relation between thought and action, to Gramsci's concepts of hegemony, moral and intellectual reform, and the collective will.

Machiavelli in the Making is both a novel interpretation of the Florentine’s work and a critical document for understanding influential French scholar and public intellectual Claude Lefort’s later writings on democracy and totalitarianism. Lefort extricates Machiavelli’s thought from the dominant interpretations of him as the founder of “objective” political science, which, having liberated itself from the religious and moralizing tendencies of medieval political reflection, attempts to arrive at a realistic discourse on the operations of raw power. Lefort ultimately finds that Machiavelli’s discourse opens the “place of the political” which had previously been occupied by theology and morality.

A new window into Machiavelli’s idea of virtuous leadership and the appropriate relationship among leaders, common citizens, and elites.

For more than a decade, John P. McCormick has been at the forefront of a new wave of scholarship that reveals the anti-elitist and democratic commitments at the center of Niccolo Machiavelli’s political thought. In The People’s Princes, McCormick turns his attention to Machiavelli’s conception of virtuous leadership and Machiavelli’s views on the appropriate relationships among individual leaders, common citizens, and elites.

While most people think of Machiavelli as a cynical advisor of tyrants—a man who counseled leaders to aggrandize themselves, by any means necessary, at the expense of their subjects and citizens—The People’s Princes fundamentally challenges this understanding. Drawing from Machiavelli’s major political works a normative standard for leadership that emphasizes the mutually reinforcing relationship of civic leadership and popular government, McCormick delineates Machiavelli’s method of “political exemplarity” by analyzing in detail the Florentine’s case studies of leaders and their interactions with populaces throughout ancient and modern history.

McCormick argues that Machiavelli suggests that civic leaders should enhance their reputations by providing for their own eventual obsolescence; specifically, they should establish institutional means through which common citizens rule themselves more directly and substantively. The People’s Princes invites readers to consider Machiavelli anew, and also reflect on insights that remain relevant in the twenty-first century amidst growing concerns that political leaders are not accountable or responsive to popular majorities.

An incisive and erudite survey of Machiavelli, the catastrophes of his times and ours, and his counsel for responding to an era of constant crises.

Catastrophe looms. Political, environmental, epidemic, and military crises arrive with increasing frequency. In The Way to Hell, Nathan Crick argues that our perilous times call for the strongest medicine in the Western canon: Machiavelli. Crick reminds contemporary readers about the Florentine master’s advice—that one must learn the road to Hell precisely to avoid taking it.

Like a knowledgeable friend, Crick offers contemporary readers a guide to Machiavelli’s world, work, and warnings. He takes in the sweep of Western history, comparing Machiavelli’s work with ancient sources such as Cicero and Thucydides. And as Machiavelli has never stopped provoking comment, Crick treats readers to a feast of responses to Machiavelli’s work—caustic, learned, and humorous—in the five centuries since he lived.

Including both Machiavelli’s best-known works, The Prince and Discourses on Livy, as well as his personal correspondence and comic plays, Crick asks anew the questions that bedeviled Machiavelli’s beloved Florentine republic: When is force necessary? When are lies justified? Is cruelty defensible? When does social protest slip into violent revolution? What is the correct response to catastrophe?

Like Machiavelli himself, The Way to Hell is witty, stimulating, and challenging. In a world seemingly on the road to Hell, Machiavelli offers an alternative route. His bracing vision exhorts readers to see the dangers in their path and to take action with vigor and determination. Far from a vision of cynicism, Machiavelli offers a beacon of hope for a world that seems on the brink.