Diplomat, bureaucrat, and practical politician, Niccol? Machiavelli served as Second Secretary to the Republic of Florence in the early sixteenth century and became the first major political thinker in the western tradition to make a complete break with the Aristotelian model of politics as a branch of ethics. While The Prince is his most famous work, grounding his reputation as the progenitor of "Realpolitik," his many other writings have...