Niccolò Machiavelli

Machiavelli served the Florentine republic as a diplomat for fourteen years. When the Medici returned to power they tortured him and exiled him to his farm. There, embittered and brilliant, he wrote The Prince — a short manual for rulers, dedicated (with naked careerism) to Lorenzo de' Medici in hopes of getting his job back. It did not work.

The book is the founding text of political realism. Machiavelli refuses to ask what a ruler should be; he asks what a ruler must do to keep power. The answer is not pretty. Promise generously, break promises when necessary, cultivate the appearance of virtue, use cruelty efficiently if you must use it at all. The medieval mirror of princes is shattered.

He is often misread. His later Discourses on Livy — far longer, much less famous — defends republican government and is one of the great works of political theory. But The Prince is the lightning bolt: the moment politics is separated from morality and given its own grammar.