Awards
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in biography
Synopses & Reviews
In this intellectual biography Sebastian de Grazia presents a new vision of Niccolo Machiavelli that evokes, with uncanny precision, the great Florentine thinker's presence. After providing an engrossing account of Machiavelli's childhood and the period following his imprisonment and torture, the book turns to an examination of The Prince. The details of Machiavelli's life his home, journeys, fears and joys, friends, loves, and works never cease to weave in and out of the narrative, as we read how his ideas gather power and coalesce into a unified vision of humankind and the world.
Review
"[This book] is both monumental and intimate, provocative and winning. Sebastian de Grazia is a wonderful writer. His book, beautifully composed, produced (I found only one error), and illustrated, should help restore Machiavelli to his rightful place among the sages, and this in turn should help restore wisdom and common sense to our political climate of ideas." The Christian Science Monitor
Review
"Engrossing, stimulating and a marvel...I have rarely read a work of scholarship so elegantly done." A. Bartlett Giamatti
Review
"A model of how intellectual biography should be done." Joseph Frank