In this impressive new biography, historian Niccolò Capponi liberates Machiavelli (1469-1527) from centuries of misinterpretation. Capponi explores the Renaissance city of Florence, where Machiavelli lived, and reveals the man behind the myth.
This results in a complex portrait of Machiavelli - the brilliant maestro of diplomacy and simultaneously the woefully inadequate historian; the astute intellectual and the unrealistic visionary; the grounded power manager and the recklessly daring gambler; the measured propagandist and the unrestrained joker.
Capponi constructs an in-depth portrait of Machiavelli and reveals the entirely anti-Machiavellian behavior of the latter, whose parochial mindset and somewhat miserable political career led him to form a narrow perception of the world.
Over the centuries, Machiavelli gained a reputation as both a devilish instigator of atheistic behavior and as a gifted theoretician of politics, hailed as the first "modern" philosopher. In reality, as Capponi's witty and imposing biography reveals, Machiavelli was a multifaceted figure who can only be understood against the backdrop of a cynical, harsh, and irreverent city like Florence.
