Machiavelli: A Renaissance Life
Niccolò Machiavelli, best known as the author of the political tract The Prince, is often cited as the proponent of cynical, manipulative, and ruthless exercise of political power. Of course, in reality, both the man and his ideas are more nuanced. Markulin, a former professor specializing in Renaissance studies, has written a so-called nonfiction novel that makes a clumsy but often enjoyable effort to examine the man and his time. Markulin captures the cultural dynamics as well as the chaos, treachery, and violence that characterized political life in fifteenth-century Italy. He also offers interesting, if not necessarily accurate, portraits of members of the Medici and Borgia families and mixes in juicy tidbits of sex and moral chicanery. Machiavelli is painted as a rather heroic and even tragic figure, and Markulin probably has inflated both his power and importance in his own time. This is not serious history, but it is an enjoyable romp through a fascinating period in European history. --Jay Freeman