On Machiavelli: The Search for Glory (Liveright Classics)
Ryan’s On Politics (2012) presented the entire history of Western political thought in two spirited and accessible volumes that emphasized the relevance of past political thought to the challenges of the present. Here, he presents a brief and pithy summary of the contributions of Niccolò Machiavelli, a pivotal figure in modern political thought who is nevertheless often misunderstood. The misunderstandings, suggests Ryan, occur when we take the sixteenth-century Florentine writer’s works out of context, or reduce them to epigrams (It is better to be feared than to be loved, and the like). The Prince, Ryan reminds us, was part of a failed job application, written following the collapse of Machiavelli’s cherished Florentine Republic. Machiavelli’s overall project, he suggests, may not have been that of shocking the sensibilities of later ages but, rather, reflecting upon the difficulties of instituting political order, whether princely or republican. Ryan’s summary is accompanied by fairly substantial extracts from Machiavelli’s key texts, allowing this book to serve as a teaching resource as well as a concise and readable introduction to its subject. A similar work by Ryan on Aristotle is reviewed above. --Brendan Driscoll