The Prince

A short handbook in 26 chapters, written in 1513 after Machiavelli lost his post in the Florentine republic, and dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici. It first sorts principalities by how they are acquired: by inheritance, by conquest, by one's own arms and ability, or by fortune and the arms of others. Cesare Borgia serves as the model of a new prince who rose by fortune and nearly held on by skill. Machiavelli insists on citizen armies over mercenaries, then turns to how a prince should behave. He sets aside imagined republics for the 'effectual truth' of things, argues that a prince must learn how not to be good, that it is safer to be feared than loved if one cannot be both, and that he must be fox and lion. It ends with fortune pictured as a flooding river and a call to free Italy from foreign armies. Readers still divide over whether it is a manual for tyrants, a cold description of power, or a lesson for republics.

It is the founding text of political realism, short enough for an afternoon, and it forces a hard question still asked of every leader: what may be done to keep power and a state intact?