Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli's Lifelong Quest for Freedom

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An enjoyably revisionist biography and a warning from the past about our world today Niccol Machiavelli lived in a fiercely competitive world, one where brute wealth, brazen liars and ruthless self-promoters seemed to carry off all the prizes and a new breed of leaders - super-rich dynasties like the Medici or military strongmen like Cesare Borgia - promised radical alternatives to the status quo. In the republic of Florence, Machiavelli and his contemporaries faced a choice- should they capitulate to these new princes, or fight to save the city's democratic freedoms In this book, Erica Benner follows Machiavelli's dramatic quest for political and human freedom through his own eyes. Far from the cynical henchman people think he was, Machiavelli emerges as his era's staunchest champion of liberty, a profound ethical thinker who refused to compromise his ideals to fit corrupt times. But he did sometimes have to mask his true convictions, becoming a great artist of fox-like dissimulation- a master of disguise in dangerous times.

Reviews

Lively, compulsively readable, fluently written and unshowily eruditeTerry Eagleton, Guardian

Compelling, unconventionalJulian Baggini, Financial Times

A ripping read . . . fascinating, charming, enjoyably unorthodoxTim Smith-Laing, Telegraph

A remarkable work of imaginative engagement backed by scholarly learning. . . can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in the craft of politics and the life of ideas.Edmund Fawcett, The New York Times

Engaging, clever, entertaining . . . Benner brings to life a Machiavelli who's a man of considerable political principle . . . a creative, lively and very readable book with more than a little contemporary resonance.Catherine Fletcher, Literary Review

A gripping portrait of a brilliant political thinker, who understood the dangers of authoritarianism and looked for ways to curb them even though independent speech had become impossible.The New Yorker

A rich, vivid and endlessly surprising portrayal of the man and his timesTracy Borman, BBC History Magazine

Erica Benner succeeds brilliantly in overturning centuries-old received views of a seminal but misunderstood writer and thinker. Her enthralling and moving evocation of Machiavelli's turbulent career, set in the milieu in which he lived, also reveals how much he is our contemporaryRosamund Bartlett

Timely, dramatic . . . an eye-opening, captivating portrait. Benner succeeds at what every biographer tries to do: she brings her subject to life for her readers.Kirkus

A readable and excellent book . . . In our world of new princes and divided societies, with increasing confrontations that can seem in constant danger of escalating to conflict, Be Like the Fox reads like a cautionary call from the pastGeneral Sir Rupert Smith

Fascinating, remarkable . . . Erica Benner illuminates not only the life of Machiavelli but the complex and cruel political world in which he operateAvi Shlaim

Vividly drawn . . . biography at its bestTimes Higher Education Supplement

Enjoyably revisionist . . . Benner deserves great praise for dragging this much-maligned man's reputation at least partly out of the mudAndrew Lynch, Sunday Business Post

A lively and engaging study told with empathy, passion and imagination . . . well-researched, forceful and thought-provokingHistorical Writers' Association

Author Bio

Erica Benner lives in Berlin. She is the author of several books, including Machiavelli's Ethics and Machiavelli's Prince- A New Reading. A former fellow in Political Philosophy at Yale, she taught for many years at Oxford University and the London School of Economics.