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The Prince
written by Niccolo Machiavelli
Studio : Public Domain Books
by Public Domain Books
Release Date : 2006-02-11
Publisher : Public Domain Books
Released : 2006-02-11
Availability : This Item is currently Not Available
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 8 reviews)
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Product Description |
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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. Also contains Valentino and Castracani |
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Dangerous and useful |
One of those books that, if they were not classics, would not be allowed to be read in polite society. A similar book is Schopenhauer's "the art of always being right," which was published posthumously, since he judged (correctly) that the Church would have excommunicated (or at least flagellated) him for it. Of course, the Church taught similar debating tricks to Jesuits, just as Church leaders practiced what bro' Niccolo preached. So yes, read the book, but then hide it before you use it.
A similar book is advice for Pick Up Artists on how to seduce women easily and pleasurably-- there are even civilian versions. (The best ones are by the Mossad and the CIA. The French SDECE of course has none, because Frenchmen do not need such instructions.) If you build a library of such seditious books, you will become unstoppable. Try it.
AM
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A Must Read |
I think that everyone should read this book. Yes, the book is very dense in parts and yes, there are several long chunks of history that can seem boring and tedious at point, but there are several priceless nuggets of wisdom. I found the book motivating and it is amazing how the principles set forth in the book hold up almost 500 years later.
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prince + 9 formatting - 3 |
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most everyone is familiar with the prince and machiavelli. it is highly influential, although of arguable influence to catherine de medici. rather, it as snowballed in its importance. frankly, political leaders have always done the things that are being done today, only now they have machiavelli to point to. he makes brilliant, astute, cunning observations throughout. sometimes it is with greater discipline than 21st century americans are used to when we read translations of, say italian works from centuries ago. nevertheless, stick with it!!! you shall not be disappointed!!! this writing comes highly recommended and i give it a solid "A". enjoy this free kindle product! |
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Prince is great, this edition is OK |
First off, if I am reviewing The Prince in and of itself I give it 5 stars, but I'm going to dedicate this review to this particular translations and Kindle edition.
I'm not a huge fan of the translation. It's definitely readable and captures the meanings and themes of the text, but I feel that there are better translations available.
The formatting as far as Kindle goes is decent, but everything kind of just runs together. I can't really complain too much for it being a free edition, but specialized Kindle formatting is definitely lacking. |
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Machiavelli's classic, now for Kindle |
This review is of the (currently free) Kindle edition of The Prince.
As others have stated at much greater length and with far greater eloquence, this is one of the most important books of political thought and philosophy ever written, and a truly timeless classic. As such, the fact that it's available for free on Kindle makes this a terrific deal, worth every single penny and many more. All the usual conveniences of Kindle applies here: very fast to download via Whispernet, the handiness of being able to annotate and highlight important passages, bookmarking pages you want to reference again later, etc. The slickness of the Kindle format and capabilities plus the inherit worthiness of the book itself easily nets 4 stars.
It's been about forever since I last read The Prince, plus I don't really know anything about Italian, so I'm not really fit to talk about the quality of the translation. Suffice it to say that it's a fairly easy book to read and make sense of, but again I can't speak to how true this particular edition is to its source material.
Unfortunately, there are a few problems with this edition of The Prince that need to be mentioned, and which in the end detract a little from the overall score. The first and biggest is in the formatting of the book. In short, it looks like a plain-text notepad file converted into a Kindle book; there's no navigable Table of Contents or chapter breaks as with most commercial Kindle books, and the book itself flows from the title page almost directly into the background about Machiavelli and then from there straight into The Prince itself, with scarcely a break in the text to mark the transition. For someone well versed in The Prince this probably isn't much of an issue, but for the more casual reader it's a little distracting and may confuse some. The other problem is more one of personal preference, which is that there's no annotations alongside the text to put specific lines into context. Again, for someone well versed in Machiavelli's life and the real-world examples he uses throughout The Prince, this probably isn't a significant issue. For more casual readers, having a little context for the examples he uses would be helpful from time to time.
In the end, you get what you pay for, and as the above-reviewed version of The Prince was free, I can't complain too much. It's brilliant, it's relevant, and it's very convenient to have on my Kindle. What more do you want for the price? |
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