Machiavelli is known for the wrong book. The Prince was written in a few months by a man out of office and hoping to get back in. The Discourses took him years, and it is the work he meant to be read.
He walks through the first ten books of Livy's history of Rome and asks, chapter by chapter, what made that republic strong and what finally killed it. The answers are not what a courtier tells a prince. Conflict between the classes made Rome free. A citizen army made it powerful. Religion held it together. Prosperity, and the men prosperity produced, took all of it apart.
One hundred and forty two chapters on founding a state, keeping it, reforming it before it rots, and reading corruption early enough for the reading to matter. How to use a dictator without losing a republic. Why conspiracies fail. Why a people judge better than a prince. Why the man who defends a free city and the man who seizes one are studying the same book.
This is the republican Machiavelli, the one the English and American republicans actually read, and the argument he made here outlived the advice he gave in The Prince.
This is the Civil Savage Society edition of Ninian Hill Thomson's translation, complete in all three Books, newly typeset in a 6 by 9 inch US Trade format, 452 pages. Every chapter opens its own page under the roman numeral the work has been cited by since 1531, Machiavelli's own dedication and both of his prefaces are kept, and his translator's notes stand at the foot of the page they belong to. No introduction arguing with the book, no apparatus talking over it.
Paperback: perfect bound on cream stock. A workhorse copy, meant to be carried, dog-eared, and marked up.
Hardcover: casewrap edition built for the shelf and the long haul.
E-Book: instant download, delivered to your email at purchase.
Print editions are produced on demand. Nothing warehoused, never out of print.
