Power, Pleasure, and Profit: Insatiable Appetites from Machiavelli to Madison

by David Wootton

Book Overview

A provocative history of the changing values that have given rise to our present discontents.

We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning--cost-benefit analysis--to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton shows, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674976673
• ISBN13: 9780674976672
• Release Date: October 2018
• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.3"