“Remarkable, engaging.… Be Like the Fox can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in the craft of politics and the life of ideas.”—New York Times Book Review In the five hundred years since he wrote The Prince, Machiavelli’s name has been linked to tyranny and the doctrine that “the ends justify the means.” But that is not what he stood for. In Be Like the Fox, Erica Benner takes us back to Renaissance Florence, where newly liberated citizens fought to build a free republic after the Medici princes were exiled. Machiavelli dedicated his life to this struggle for freedom. But despite his heroic efforts, the Medici soon swept back into power. Forced out of politics and prevented from speaking freely, Machiavelli had to use his skills of foxlike dissimulation to defend democracy in an era of tyrannical princes. Drawing on his letters, political writings, hard-hitting satirical dramas, and conversations with kings and popes, Be Like the Fox reveals Machiavelli as an unlikely hero for our times.

Niccol Machiavelli lived in a fiercely competitive world, one where brute wealth, brazen liars and ruthless self-promoters seemed to carry off all the prizes and a new breed of leaders - super-rich dynasties like the Medici or military strongmen like Cesare Borgia - promised radical alternatives to the status quo. In the republic of Florence, Machiavelli and his contemporaries faced a choice- should they capitulate to these new princes, or fight to save the city's democratic freedoms? In this book, Erica Benner follows Machiavelli's dramatic quest for political and human freedom through his own eyes. Far from the cynical henchman people think he was, Machiavelli emerges as his era's staunchest champion of liberty, a profound ethical thinker who refused to compromise his ideals to fit corrupt times. But he did sometimes have to mask his true convictions, becoming a great artist of fox-like dissimulation- a master of disguise in dangerous times.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 In 1475, Bartolommea went to church with her serving girl Nencia. She found her husband, Bernardo, in his study, studying Titus Livy’s histories of Rome. She told him that Nencia was with child, and that the father was their neighbor Nicolò di Alessandro Machiavelli. #2 When dealing with people who are likely to lie, you should appeal to their self-interest. Most people care more about their own gains than about doing the decent thing. #3 The sinews of a common human life are contracts, informal agreements, and reciprocal duties. They are the basis of any human relationship, and they play a large role in Bernardo’s daily life. He had inherited a few small farms outside the city, as well as a tavern in the village of Sant’ Andrea in Percussina, near San Casciano. #4 The world that Niccolò grew up in was full of promises, and people depended on them to function. If they didn’t keep their promises, it was too risky to sell, buy or borrow anything.

Machiavelli's Ethics challenges the most entrenched understandings of Machiavelli, arguing that he was a moral and political philosopher who consistently favored the rule of law over that of men, that he had a coherent theory of justice, and that he did not defend the "Machiavellian" maxim that the ends justify the means. By carefully reconstructing the principled foundations of his political theory, Erica Benner gives the most complete account yet of Machiavelli's thought. She argues that his difficult and puzzling style of writing owes far more to ancient Greek sources than is usually recognized, as does his chief aim: to teach readers not how to produce deceptive political appearances and rhetoric, but how to see through them. Drawing on a close reading of Greek authors--including Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Plutarch--Benner identifies a powerful and neglected key to understanding Machiavelli. This important new interpretation is based on the most comprehensive study of Machiavelli's writings to date, including a detailed examination of all of his major works: The Prince, The Discourses, The Art of War, and Florentine Histories. It helps explain why readers such as Bacon and Rousseau could see Machiavelli as a fellow moral philosopher, and how they could view The Prince as an ethical and republican text. By identifying a rigorous structure of principles behind Machiavelli's historical examples, the book should also open up fresh debates about his relationship to later philosophers, including Rousseau, Hobbes, and Kant.

This book gives a radical, new, chapter-by-chapter reading of Machiavelli's The Prince, arguing that it is an ironic masterpiece with a moral purpose. It outlines Machiavelli's most important ironic techniques: a normatively coded use of language.

Ever dream of starting your own business? According to USA Today, more than 47 million people want to own their own businesses and over 20 million actually do. In How to Make Big Money in Your Own Small Business, bestselling business author Jeffrey Fox offers sound rules to succeeding in small business, whether you're running a bookstore, consulting business, or restaurant. In short chapters that range from administration and cash flow to marketing and hiring, Fox reminds entrepreneurs what's important and what's not, what makes a business succeed, and what causes it to fail.

“The best education in grand strategy available in a single volume . . . a book that should be read by every American leader or would-be leader.”—The Wall Street Journal A master class in strategic thinking, distilled from the legendary program the author has co-taught at Yale for decades John Lewis Gaddis, the distinguished historian of the Cold War, has for almost two decades co-taught grand strategy at Yale University with his colleagues Charles Hill and Paul Kennedy. Now, in On Grand Strategy, Gaddis reflects on what he has learned. In chapters extending from the ancient world through World War II, Gaddis assesses grand strategic theory and practice in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Octavian/Augustus, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Philip II, the American Founding Fathers, Clausewitz, Tolstoy, Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Isaiah Berlin. On Grand Strategy applies the sharp insights and wit readers have come to expect from Gaddis to times, places, and people he’s never written about before. For anyone interested in the art of leadership, On Grand Strategy is, in every way, a master class.

Joly's (1831-78) Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu is the major source of one of the world's most infamous and damaging forgeries, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That, however, was concocted some two decades after he died, and American political scientist Waggoner points to Joly's own text for evidence that he was not anti-semitic and was an intransigent enemy of the kind of tyranny the forgery served during the 1930s. He translates the text and discusses Joly's intentions in writing it and his contribution to the understanding of modern politics. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Vision, persistence, integrity, and respect for everyone in the workplace--these are all qualities of successful leaders. But Jeffrey J. Fox, the founder of a marketing consulting company, also gives these tips: never write a nasty memo, skip all office parties, and overpay your people. These are a few of his key ways to climb the corporate ladder.

There’s been a revolution in negotiating tactics. The world’s best negotiators have moved beyond How to Win Friends & Influence People and Getting to Yes. For over twenty years. David Sally has been teaching the art of negotiation at leading business schools and to executives at top companies. Now, he delivers the proven, clear, actionable insights you need to stay competitive in an ever-changing marketplace. One Step Ahead offers the fundamental wisdom that elevates the sophisticated negotiator above everyone else. Readers will gain the advantage in everything from determining when to negotiate and deciphering a game strategically, to understanding which personality traits matter, why emotions are not necessarily to be avoided, and how to be tough and fair. You’ll learn to be round on the outside and square on the inside, how to command the idiom, why to avoid bumping into the furniture, and how to achieve mastery of the word and the number. While all of life is not a negotiation, Sally says, a negotiation incorporates all of life—One Step Ahead is for anyone and everyone who bargains, parents, manages, buys, sells, emotes, and engages. Based on cutting-edge studies and real-world results, and drawing parallels to everything from the NBA to the corner con game to Machiavelli, Xi Jinping, and Barack Obama, One Step Ahead upends conventional wisdom to make sure that you have what it takes to stay one step ahead—no matter whom you are facing across the table.