Intriguing, but best for those with a particular interest in Machiavelli or 16th-century Italian politics.
A chronicle of how Machiavelli’s unforgiving and complex view towards politics and leadership coexisted with an unusual generosity of spirit.
Born into a humble family during a time when Florence was ruled by the Medicis and among the richest of Italian principalities, Machiavelli read deeply and became enamored of the ancient Roman historians and philosophers. After the fall of the Medicis, the execution of Savonarola, and the establishment of a Republic, Machiavelli secured a diplomatic appointment. He was called upon to travel widely in service to the Florentine government, and he developed a strong reputation for his diplomatic and rhetorical skills. When the Medicis later returned to power and dismantled the Republic, Machiavelli lost his position. He wrote The Prince—a series of short treatises on statecraft—both as a display of his diplomatic virtuosity and in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the new rulers. Viroli (Political Science/Princeton Univ.) asserts that while Machiavelli is best known for advocating deception and manipulation in political matters, he had a robust appreciation for friendship and love in his personal life. In fact, the philosopher is most openly revealed to be both an ambitious and fallible man through his evolving relationships with women—including his wife, female heads of state, and a variety of lovers—rather than in his capacity as a politician. His love affairs are recounted in unedited, scatological detail, and the author also offers small selections from Machiavelli’s lesser-known works—thereby offering an unusual glimpse into the private life of a very public man. Throughout, Viroli struggles to establish a symbol of Machiavelli’s “smile” as a stand-in for his overall personality—and something he would like us to see as multifaceted, elastic, and enigmatic as that of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa—but it is a labored and unnecessary literary trope.
Intriguing, but best for those with a particular interest in Machiavelli or 16th-century Italian politics.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-374-22187-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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