Machiavelli based The Prince on his profound understanding of human nature. This short treatise on Renaissance statecraft and power has been controversial and inspiring since its first publication 500 years ago. Machiavelli's analysis of the ways men seize, retain, and lose power was the first analysis of realpolitik and has been used ever since as a handbook for manipulating events to one's own advantage. In Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince Tim Phillips...