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how to manage like mackia vellie for relationships. you name it his name comes up. he's one of the few men, one of the few names that really comes down and coming to the common language. and i think there's always a fascination with him. part of it based on a misunderstanding, part of it valid but he's certainly one of the perennially fascinating characters.

they might call themselves pragmatists or realist bus very few people want to be called machiavellien because he has been associated with kind of an underhand approach to not only politics but to life as well and i don't think this is what he is about but it's a natural misunderstanding and goes back to the first years after where he was called an enemy of the human race, the finger of satan. so there's certainly always a fascination for people who get that kind of reputation. >> when did you get interested in him? >> that's interesting you ask that because i thought back to

giving a talk shortly after i completed the book and it came out. i realized i had written a paper in tenth or levinth grade in machiavelli and i was living in florence but i remember my fascination with him in particular, i had this notion that he was not the man that he was purported to be. he was not this villain but rather somebody who was dealing with the realities as he found them and wanted to find a way to honestly look at human beings the way they were and in my naive way and i wish i had that paper somewhere that i had written, but it was sort of i have not really changed my ideas on him that much. much more knowledgeable but that idea that he was up to something other than the common perception of what he was up to is something na always

fascinated me. >> why were you living in florence in that time in your life? >> well, my mother took us to florence. i went there when i was 11 and had most of my high school years there. my mother i think she wanted to follow in the footsteps of henry james and the brownings and that very romantic notion of florence and sort of took her three kids right after she got divorced and it was sort of a lark and for me it was certainly fascinating. fell in love with the city and the history. and i have gone back many times since then. just to me, i mean, florence is such a wonderful place to be. and it's a beautiful, fascinating city. full of both violence and the height of civilization and the kind of lowest lows of human depravet. that's kind of the fascinating

era. and you can still see that. >> where was your home originally? >> i moved around a lot. sort of off and on new yorker. my father was a college professor and we moved around a great bit. i was born in california. i now make my home near boston. but i go back to florence as often as i can. i still love it. >> how many books have you written and what were the others about? >> well, before this book, i got on this florin tin renaissance. my last book i wrote a book on lornseo called mag niff coand the central figure, the defining figure of the italian renaissance, the man who presided over florence in its golden age. he was known as flonchseo the mag niff sense and it kind of captured the artistic production of florence at that time. and writing about lorenso and

if politics and the machineations and is t violence beneath the surface it was sort of natural. hi died when machiavelli was 23 so he knew him, probably knew him personally. knew his family and his son. machiavelli seemed like a natural follow i don't know from that. >> what year was machiavelli born and where? >> he was born in 1469 in the city of flonchese. florence was one of the five major states of renaissance italy. italy was not even a country. it was divided among five major powers and a hoach of principalities and heavy states. florence was the weakest of the five. it was sort of most centrally located and also probably the weakest. weaker than the kingdom of milan, venice, which has a

great maritime empire. you had naples down at the south ruled by the spanish born family and then you had the papal state which surrounded florence on the three sides. and was a precarious position for florence. and during machiavelli's youth, he was a very adept politician, very adept diplomat and he managed to keep all these balls sort of in the air, managing to keep italy at peace and more importantly the foreigners out. and with his death comes the calamity when the foreigners sort of sweep in and cause chaos and destruction. >> i notice you say he lived to be 88. >> no he lived to be 58. >> maybe it's a misprint that i read. >> could be. he died in 1527. >> i thought. >> michael anglo lived to be 88. >> but 58 for a man of that era is an average, perhaps above

average. >> go through those 58 years and where was he and i know you write about the time 14 years he was a public servant and prison. >> well the first he spent the first 29 years exactly half of his life doing not much of anything. he was a son of an impoverished gentleman who didn't want to work. he had a small estate outside florence. and he managed his small pat moany, managed to eek a small living, enough to allow him to lead a life of leisure. and he originally followed very much in his father's footsteps as kind of a dill tant. he had a good adication which means he learned latin. he learned to memorize and to read most of the great latin writers, cisero and virgele and seneca and others and he got a

good education but didn't accomplish very much until he was 29. and it was only then with the fall of nave rolla that he takes on a career in public service and he does this for 14 years. during a period in which florence had recovered, it's a republican institution, it had been dominated for decades. but in 1494, the men atchi are expelled and there's a four year interim where there's a preacher really running things in florence. and then with his execution in 1498, right after that machiavelli takes office which suggests that he belonged to that party that was opposed. and for that 14 years he served as what i like to think of, trying to find an equivalent in today's politics, kind of an

undersecretary of state, roving diplomat. not a top-top member of the bureaucracy but a fairly high official with fairly large responsibilities which continued to grow as he shows himself to be a capable energyic and patriotic man. he does this for 14 years until dam chi returned to florence on the backs of the spanish that they'd been trying for 14 years to get back. they finally manage it after the florin tins back the wrong army. they back the french army. the spanish army is victorious. the brothers, a cardinal and july no succeed in getting a bunch of mercenaries descend upon the city, topple the government of which mack vellie is a part and he is booted out of office unsare moan yussly. following that a couple of months later he is actually in

prison and tortured because he -- his name crops up on a list of people in the pocket of somebody who is plotting to overthrow the regime, a young man who is trying to gather conspirators and his name was on the list. he was never approached. and if he had been it's almost certain that he would have shut the door in his face. he was not too big on conconspiracyies. he writes that a couple of times saying how dangerous they are and how off they fail. machiavelli could often be a political agitator but he was not somebody who believed in kind of violent overthrow of legitimate government. he was very much a bureaucrat. and i think one of the things about him is he's the first man who really speaks for the bureaucracy, the federal bureaucracy. the man who puts the values of

the state of government over the people. and he really represents, he's the first to sort of articulate that view, the french phrase reason of state. and he is really the proponent of that kind of system. >> when did he marry? >> he married in 1501. he married a young woman from the neighboring quarter of florence named marietta. who is probably slightly above him socially. she was a young -- we don't know that much about her because women were not really considered worthy -- and mackia valleyie didn't really consider her worthy of spending a lot of time and effort recording her sort of day-to-day life. marriage in florence was very much a kind of business arrangement. she was from a suitable family where more or less equal to the mackia valley perhaps a little more established, perhaps a

little less down at the heels. so he was probably moving up a bit when he married her. >> children? >> he had six children, four boys, two girls. he was a good family man to that extent. and their marriage was i don't think by our standards not conventional marriage. he was quite a fill anderer. he liked visiting the who houses. he serious serially unfaithful. his wife seem to put up with this partly because that was expected of a good wife. she was almost certainly considerably a decade or so younger than he was. this was typical of marriages. men married in their late 20s, women in their late teens. so the difference in age meant that he was probably much more worldly and sophisticated man. and she was there. and one of the interesting things you have about her, one of the few things we know about

her is she complained often that he was never around. he was always going off on these trips. to the cort of france and she complained that he was absent which suggests that when he was there she enjoyed his company and they had a good family life. and thai did produce six children so they managed to spend a good deal of time together. >> i have a question about where you find this stuff. i know it's not stuff. but the material in the book. how do you know 500 years later that he visited a house of prostitutes? >> because he wrote about it. and he was not shy about exposing his own peck dillos one of the great things about him is his humanity, his warmth, his ability to sort of see the ridiculousness in other people but also in himself, which is why he was quite popular about his many letters from his friends talking about

his wonderful sense of humor which was rather coarse. and he writes an awful letter of an experience he has in which he was away in which he visited a prostitute in the dark and he was sold some -- they came and said they have this lovely young thing for you. pay and you can have her. and of course it transpires that when he turns on the light she's this old toothless hag. but this is the kind of humor and the stuff that he and his friends wrote. it was not a vick torn age by any means. very earthy, things we probably can't say on tv. but we do know he reported on his various loves, his affairs.

and his friends did as well. they often teased him saying if you come back to florence you're going to get in trouble for having engaged in unnatural sex acts. much of it was humerous but certainly he was no saint in his personal behavior. >> do you have any idea how many people there were in the world 500 years ago? >> many fewer than today. i don't know. i don't know the answer. >> do you have any idea around florence? >> florence was actually surprisingly small. considering if you think about florence and how florence looms and the kind of culture, and the west, civilization, it's surprising that it was a city of less than 50,000 people at the time that he lived there. i don't know what it compares to. in terms of some very small american towns. but it produced bruno and

davinchi and michael anglo, done tello, dante. i mean, lists of geniuses in a population that small is incredibly impressive and almost inexplicable. but it was a very small town. it has been larger in the middle ages. it had been decimated by the black plague in the 14th century and a population probably slurning by half. so at its peak it was probably a city of about 100,000. >> so what would happen if the people who have a seat over in the house and the senate and the three that don't have voting but are representatives read your book and thought through what machiavelli said back in those years and also read the press? what could they learn from it? >> well, i think i think the greatest contribution he has made to political thought is

sort of the look at things practically. he was the philosopher's who came before him, those who wrote about politics before him going back to plato and aristotle and st. thomas equineyuss believed essentially that the world and politics and human society really advanced and really based on something rational. for the reason both aristotle and plato thought that reason ruled the way the world works and human societies were. and he said that politics is the knowledge by which we make men good. that does not -- machiavelli's philosophy. machiavelli said that many have believed and written about societies that never were and never could be.

i want to show you the way men really are. so i think in the broadest sense he was the first to sort of look at men as they really are and to say, ok, men are selfish, they're ambitious, they're deceitful. how can we build a government based on this premise? and i think certainly the founding fathers had a very similar attitude towards politics, that men are basically ambitious, untrust worthy no one has a monopoly on the truth. this is why we have our checks and our balances. madison, famously said, one of the federalist papers, i don't remember which, that ambition must be made to counter act ambition. and that is how we form a more perfect union. and i think this was something that really goes back to mackia vella's notion of looking at men as they really are,

selfish. >> the people that wrote our constitution read machiavelli? >> we know that john adams did because he wrote about him. the other one, there's no -- or very little direct testimony. but we do know that they read people who read machiavelli. particularly a group known as the common wealth men. and they came out of the english liberal tradition and were the people like john lock. there's a famous treatice that most of the founding fatsers had in their library's called cato's letters which is a long passage about machiavelli and why we should not regard him as a philosopher of evil as he had been believed but a man who was showing us that men are selfish in ordthear we may guard against it, in order that we may build systems that can work with and sort of balance one interest off against the other.

so indirectly if not directly we know that machiavelli had an influence on the founding fathers and the way our constitution is framed. >> i have a copy here of the prints. do you have any idea how many of these have been sold in 50e0 years? >> no. it was i would say it was a best seller shortly after his death, particularly after it was put on the index of prohibitive books buy the pope. >> why would the pope put it on the list? >> 1559 was the reaction to the response to martin luther and the confirmation and the trying to reform its way and to combat the growing threat of patriot ntism by reviving the church and fighting back. and one of the things they want to do is to crack down and defend, to sort of come up with a unified line.

and machiavelli had written terrible things about the church. he had pretty much raked them over the coals, particularly in the discourses where he blames the church for having made, basically having destroyed italy. he said the church was too strong to allow a proper government to form in italy but not strong enough to unify it. they were continually inviting in foreigners to sort of save their bacon. they invited in the french or the spanish or the austrians, whenever they were threatened thribi stirring the pot or making it possible for them to develop a unified government. >> was he religious? >> he was not religious. he was -- he paid lip service to religion and many people have asked over the years whether he was an atheist or not. my own sense was that he didn't really care enough to care to

be an atheist. he was sort of outwardly conventional though there were times when he said i didn't attend mass. i don't attend mass like i know you do he wrote. he off made fun of religious people. he thought they were corrupt, as they were if you know the renaissance popes. they were, acknowledged his own children, the ruler of florence murdered. they were not a spiritual lot i think. >> somebody who was a pope at 13 or a cardinal at 13? >> he was a cardinal at 13. his son who later becomes pope leo 10th was made cardinal as a political favor to him. that was the way things went. it was a little unusual even for that time but that sort of -- it was very much, and it's not entirely the church's fault they were sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place because

they were the spiritual leader but they were also a state. they were also a political entity that had to fight for its territories, fight for its life just like every other territory. they were sort of caught betwifment and between trying to be the spiritual father to their flock and sort of acting like a renaissance. >> how often do you run into people that have never read the prints? >> most people have i think at one time or another in school or someplace. you find it in sort of interesting places. i remember shortly after i started writing this book my editor sent me a little clip about reportedly lindsey lohan was carrying the prints around with her flt i'm not sure if he learned the proper lessons from it. but he has an appeal outside of the realm of politics that i think very few other political writers have. i think because he represents such a kind of personality type

, the guy who is not going to put up with any of the funny business, he's going to sort of puncture the piety and the saunching assumption and in a way any time somebody sort of talked about how good people are basically good, there are people who believe that but there's also the other types who believe people are basically scoundrels and ought to check your pockets to make sure they haven't been picked. that is machiavelli. people who feel that way feel a kinship with machiavelli. they relate to him on sort of a visceral level. >> where did you get your education? >> my informally i got my education largely in florence. i went to brand dike and i an art major. i wrote about art for many years before i went back to my original love of history and italian and renaissance history

in particular. >> how do you make your living? >> as a writer. >> no teaching? >> i have taught before. i used to be a journalist and an editor at a paper. but right now i earn my living writing. >> where were you a journalist? >> i editted a magazine called art new england for many years. i wrote for the "new york times" for many years. and i've written for numerous other publicications along the way. and i also taught teaching was not my calling. i prefer sort of sitting there in front of the computer. >> what happened to mom in all this? >> she's still alive? >> no. she died some years ago. we eventually, we couldn't financially manage to stay in italy. it was a lark, as i said. it was kind of a spontaneous thing and i don't think my father appreciated it that much and was paying child support to have his kids 3,000 miles away.

it was not ideal for him. and so we stayed there four and a half years about and then i finally came back to complete high school in the united states. >> where are your siblings? >> one of them living in new york and the other living in germany right now. he writes for the economist and sort of goes all over the world. >> do either one of them as interested in all this as you are? >> no. i thinktime one has that period stuck. even before i moved there i was interested in art. when you're in florence sort of surrounded by michael anglo, you know not many other places better to be. but there are two writers in the family. my father is also a writer an historian and written many books. >> where does he live no snu >> he lives in new jersey. he taught at n.y.u. for many years, an american historian.

i sort of came to history in a round about way. >> what's his first name? >> irwin. >> back to the press. you have a photograph in the book, a couple of them. did you take those by any chance? >> i took some of them. >> the one is where he wrote the prints, the house. >> yeah. i did. >> where is that? >> it's in a little village called santa draya which is about ten miles south of florence. and i urge anybody going to florence to visit it not so much for his house which you can see it's lovely countryside. machiavelli wasn't too happy there. he felt he was exiled there. that's his house. very much the way it was when he lived there. if you have the concierge open up the house, it's funny because italians have so much history around them they don't -- it's not like going to mount vernonen or something. touf go across the street, find

somebody who will open the door for you. they'll show you around and say here's the desk where he wrote the prints. but still very much and the village very much the way it was in his day. >> how much time did you spend there? >> this time when i photographed, i had spent a day there. there's not many amenities or things to do. a beautiful day trip out of florence and sort of roaming. we walked around the olive fields, the vineyard still very much, you can feel you're back in the 15th century. and to see the sort of world through his eyes, what he considered his place of exile. he only spent time there large chunks of time there after he lost his job and he felt very much, you can actually see florence from the dome. you can still see and the tower

of the pal yass where he worked as a second chancellor of florence. and he must have sat there and pined. and he talks about this he would do anything to get back to florence to get back to work. he was not one of these people who loved the countryside. >> how old was he after his 14 years of working for the government when he lost his job? >> he was about 45. and then how old was he when he wrote the prints? >> he wrote it very quickly thereafter because he was a man as he said, it was not suiteded to sort of puttering around his farm tilling the soil, clipping the vines. that was not him. he was very much a political animal and as soon as he lost his job, as soon as he got out of prison and then recovered from the physical ordeal of the torture he had undergone, he was very anxious toe get back into the good grafse of the people who now ran the government. they were back in power and so if he wanted to get back, have

any position in government he needed to ingraciate himself. >> well in the prints he writes a letter. right. >> and he says this. i realized -- this is in his letter. i realized there was nothing more precious or important to me than my knowledge of great men and their doings. was he playing that? >> partly. he did this less well than most flatterers. machiavelli, despite the name, was very unmackia vellions. he was constantly advising to be deceitful to be doing anything he could but he in his own life was rather too frank for his own good. he would tell people unpleasant truths. and in the case of prints which was in effect a job application to get back, he gave us to, he

originally wrote it for juliano. and then his nephew takes over. so the final dedication goes to lornseo and he presents it to him as a job application. he says here is the fruit of -- i can't give you expensive gift, i can't give you poetry. but what i can give you is the wisdom accrued over 14 years of service to the government. and he didn't want to hear anything about it. >> what, is your original manu script anywhere? >> no. it was not published in fact, it was -- as far as i know there are no copies of the written manu script. but it's circulating in its own day and then a few years after he died, it was published. but it was quite well known in intellectual circles in florence during his lifetime. and that made him actually

quite notorious among the florn tin intelligence. >> here's something out of chapter 13. >> it's a small book. >> yes, it is. that's one of the reasons it's so popular. a an easy read, a if you know read. >> what men in particularly rulers and this particular translater uses rulers for the word prints all throughout. he says if you always want to play the good man in a world where most people are not good, this is what he is saying, you'll end up badly. hence, if a ruler wants to survive, he'll have to learn to stop being good at least when the occasion demands. >> that is a classic formulation of machiavelli. again, he had -- he was under the mad the rather reasonable assumption that no ruler can do anything unless he's in power and no ruler who always a follows the path of virtue will remain in power long.

but he did say that the best thing for a rule tore do would not necessarily to always be virtuous but to appear virtuous. that is the key. he's appearing virtuous can also be useful. being virtuous rarely is. >> actually, the next chapter. hence, if you're determined to have people think of you as generous, you'll have to be lavish in every possible way. naturally, a ruler who follows his policy will soon use up all his wealth. to the point that if he wants to keep his reputation, he'll have to impose special taxes and do everything a ruler can to raise cash. people will start to hate him and no one will respect him. now he has no money. >> very applicable to today's situation. >> that's what i was going to ask you. in order to ivengrasheyate yourself with the people, you've got to constantly spend on them, give them what they want, don't raise their taxes

and of course then you eventually run out of money and you're stuck with a situation where sort of the fix we're in now where we have to get revenue somewhere or stop spending neither of which is palateable to a people who has constantly been told they can have everything. >> in those days there was no electricity? >> no. >> no cell phones. no ways to play music except live. and in that house do you have any idea when he was in that house how he wrote? what did they use in those days? >> if quill pen. ink. and parchment or paper. probably parchment since he was not rich he was constabtly complaining about money. so he wrote with a quill pen on paper and this was the early days of printing. sort of the burst of printing in italy right around the same

time he was writing. and a couple of pieces were published. the only book that was published in his lifetime was the art of war. the other ones circulated in manu script but there were be copies if a work were popular. people wanted to read it there would be professional coppists. >> are there first editions of the prince anywhere? >> i don't know what the earliest edition. i would imagine there are from the 1530s. i am not -- i don't know the market. i would love to have one. >> we'll see if we can get you one. >> he left the government around 45 and he died when he was 58. and he wrote it right in the 45-56. >> he wrote it very quickly. he has a letter from december 10, he wrote to his friend, ambassador to rome.

he said identify written in pamphlet and i hope he'll read it and allow me to at least roll stones with him. at least put me to some useful work. he had written it quickly but he was out of prison february 1513. but december he said he had finished it so it was a quick work. he dashed off in the sort of heat of the moment and as you point out it's quite a short book. >> how long had he been in prison? >> he was in prison for about three weeks which wouldn't have been so terrible conditions were not good but the worst thing about it was that he was constantly threatened with being excuted. a couple of people who were implicated were beheaded sort of right outside his window which must have been a very unnerving experience. and he was also tortured. the florin tins favored form of torture was something where they take your arms and bind it

behind your back and put you on a platform and then pull the platform out and basically dislocate your shoulders and rip your muscle. not a pleasant thing. the same torture had been applied before the execution and he broke very quickly and confessed to everything, confessed to all the crimes he wanted him to. machiavelli seemed to be made of sterner stuff but perhaps because he didn't have much to confess. he was innocent. and but he was proud of himself for how he came out of that saying he thought of himself a better than than before having endured this. >> here's chapter 18. pope alexander the sixth never did anything but con people. >> that was all he ever thought about. and he always found people who he could con. no one ever gave more convincing promises than

alexander or assure greater oaths to back them up and to oner kept his promises less. yet his deceptions always work because he knew this side of human nature so very well. >> he had a grudging respect for pope alexander who is the same as rod go borgea the infamous of the borgea family. and he, this is one of his, the points he makes throughout and one of the things that's given him a reputation for such wickedness. and even more than his defense of violence, his defense of why that has go him into such trouble over the years. but he makes the point that alexander by lying managed to succeed where others more honest failed. which would you rather have? a man -- and a ruler's job is to succeed and alexander succeeded. so he would, i think in the case of lamper he also chastises him because he says

that his lies and his success were meant only for his own family. he contrasts this with julius ii, lamper's successor who was equally due police tu and equally violent but his lies and his violence were for the sake of the church, for the sake of something larger than pure nepotism and so i think it's fair to say that mackia vell attitude towards alexander was grudging with respect with perhaps the emphasis on the grudging. >> how many of those popes back then were married? >> none were married. many had children. few acknowledged their children. one of the things about borgea was that he openly acknowledged his own children. usually popes would pass off their children as nephews. >> did he have children when he

was pope? >> no. he was an older man by then but he had children when he was cardinal. and he was very open he had mistresses. he and his son participateds in murders in the vatican. it was sort of like rome under nearo. of course his most infamous son was cesare borgea and there was a mysterious borgea as well. >> you said that his son had siffluss? >> yeah. it was going around. it had been brought in. people speculated it had come over with columbus' ships. and when the french armies invided, the italians assumed they brought it with them. i don't know if it's fair but

seemed to coin side with the french invasion a year or two after it becomes a serious problem in italy and around the rest of europe and the italians called it the french pox. >> you said that pope alexander's the son committed the deadly sins of greed, wrath, lust, gluttony and pride? >> hum hmm. >> and he was not -- one of the refreshing things is that even more of his predecessors were equally corrupt he didn't care who knew it, he felt confident enough in himself and his power that he could get away wit. and given the track record of people who went around murdering political enemies, it was pretty safe to assume that he could get away with it even when they started railing against him from the pull pit

in florence he put up with the insults as long as he was politically on board. he didn't mind being called a lustful, greedy corrupt man. he said yes, pretty much i am. >> i wrote down a quote when i was reading your book. i believe christ speaks through my mouth was his quote. then you give the impression or not impression but truth that he was an evangelist type? >> he was a fundamental list. some describe him as a religious fen atic. he was a visiony and i think he's an interesting character because he had some very admirable attributes and some scary attributes. >> who was he? >> a frier who came to florence in 1492, which meaks him a foreigner but he quickly gamed

a reputation of a fire and brim stone teacher calling on florence to reform their ways. the judgment is at hand. fire and pest lens and flood will come. and he got a very good response because i think florn tin felt a little guilty about their sort of lifestyle. the corruption. he also, and i think is one of the most admirable aspect. he was an advocate for the poor and the oppressed. the disenfranchised workers, the urban. so he had, he was very much a democrat. he was responsible for restoring the democratic institutions of florence after the expulsion. but he was also dangerously convinced i think that, as you say, god spoke with him. he kept talking about his own martyrdom. he might have been emotionally unstable. but through the four years that

he in effect ruled florence, he put them through the wringer. it was many people thought the rapture, the sort of second coming was about to come and people had to reform their ways. he built these huge bomb fires and the central square where shelly would throw his paintings and jewels would be thrown and bro caded dresses. so all the wealth of florence ended up being consumed in these huge bond fires and it was a reaction to the kind of corruption and sort of luxury of florence. >> did i read in the book that he really didn't believe this stuff? >> well, when he was tortured he was claimed that he was made to confess. then he recanted that confession. it's always difficult to dell

where personal ambition and genuine belief separate. i think he was both. i think he was very ambitious. but his oosmbigs as he saw it was for christ, for a bester world. and i think we see that in sort of contemporary figures who mix religious visionary qualities with sort of messianic belief in themselves for the politician. it's very hard to know where belief ends and pure personal ambition begins. >> contrast where you wrote it with where machiavelli wrote the prints. what were the circumstances for you? where did you do it? >> well, i did a lot of research in italy and florence. i spent a lot of time in restaurants. i'd been doing some research as well getting a feel for the place. and i think that's what i always like to go back, every book i write about florence i

take one trip to drink in the atmosphere and the keente. and but i most of the circumstances are not quite as romantic. i spent a lot of time in front of the computer screen. fortunately for something like this, there's a lot of material available. his letters which are a wonderful read either the original italian or even in english translation just very lively and full of wonderful incidents and colorful tails. he is quite a story teller himself. >> are they on line sf >> i haven't found them on line. >> where do you go to get them? >> there are italian editions of his complete letters which i read and i believe there's also an english version. >> are you fluent in italian? >> yeah. my speaking is a bist rusty but

my reading is still pretty good. though 15thth century tusken is dint than modern italian. >> big publisher. a name from 500 years ago. who's idea was it yours or theirs? >> it was originally my idea. it was shaped as we went along as most projects are. i had, we had talked about doing a book i think it's interesting that two people who represent almost dime etically opposed visions of the world were in the same place at the same time. and one of the early chapters of the book i talk about that point in which machiavelli is in the crowd while he's preaching one of his hell fire sermons and machiavelli is commenting on it. he was sent there to write a

report and ropt back what he was saying. but the idea of the two people being there, having completely opposite views of what made the world tick. what the world was about. would end up being sort of paired down a bit to machiavelli. but i would certainly, both interested in this period of florin tin history endlessly fascinating period. >> do you have any idea how many copies of this book that the publisher thinks will sell? >> i don't. i'm not sure. i do not know how many they ran off. i sort of stay away from the sort of marketing end of things. >> but what's the audience? is this for clenls? >> it's also for people who like biography, who like rousing tails of interesting figures from different periods

and the people read biographies of cleeo pat ra. an endless hunger for biographies. the founding fathers. i think he's one of the seminal figures of sort of western thought. a very interesting guy and entertaining guy to be around. i certainly enjoyed spending a couple years with him. >> here's a sentence from your book near the end. how cynical was he? >> he was, he had a rather skeptical view of human nature i think you could say.

he believed people were basically selfish, weak, fearful. pursued their own advantages. but he also had a very humane view of the human race. i think he was a very warm -- i think it certainly comes through in his commedeas. he said men are coundrls. in some seps. but we're basically animals pursuing our own basic needs. and he was accepting of human nature and i think that's one of the things that made him different that had a rather bleak view of human nature like st. augustine for instance who talks about human beings are essentially wicked. machiavelli was much more accepting saying it is impossible to go against what nature is compelling you to do.

we're basically animals competing for resources, competing for power. and it is, what is unnatural is to expect people not to live like this. so he had a very sort of, on one hand skeptical but also sympathetic with that. >> you write this too. what do you think his reaction would be if he came back today 500 years later and he saw that his book was everywhere? >> i think he would get a kick out of it. he was very ambitious. he was not focusing on it. he was have -- i think one of the things that drove him was the sense of his own marge nalt in society. he was always had to work, but had some rich stupid man that

he had to cort like lornso da men chi and i think it irritated him that they treated him with such disdain and eng he would gotten a kick the longo to which he dedicated the book? nobody remembers him except that he dedicated the prince to hill. >> did he ever get a job after he was run out of government? >> he got a job not quite a job. he was sent on missions after a number of years after being in the political wilders in. he got a number of assignments from julia who is more sympathetic figure. cardinal's becomes the pope and they're both fellow entrepreneurials. he has kind of a mutual admiration and kept small assignments late in life, gets

back in the saddle again fighting for florin tin independence in very difficult times. so he never really got a steady job. he sort of later in life he did manage to contributing something to his country and he was an arden patriot. >> here's more from the press. in this regard it's worth noting that you can be hated jist as much for the good you do as the bad which is why as i said before a ruler or a print wants to stay in power is often forced not to be good. because when a powerful group, whether they be the common people, the arm or the nobility, is corrupt. then if you reckon you need their support, you'll have to play to their mood to keep them happy and at that point any good you do will only put you at risk. >> again, what would he think

about -- if he came to this country today and looked at what was going on, i think he would see a lot of pandering going on. he lied in a less squeemish age. i don't think that's the most hard-headed politician today would imprison and behead his political opponents. but i think he would look at our political system and he would see that a lot of people are afraid to tell the truth or afraid to do the hard work necessary to get things done. i think -- he's not a big fan of pandering. he wrote a scathing indictment of those who during a period of war when he was trying to reconquer the little republic of pizza that had escaped its grasp and people were refusing to pay their taxes to fund the

war. he wrote a scathing indictment. how can you who claim to want to be free but will do nothing to bring that about. and i think he probably would have been very harch on the lack of civic mindedness that he would find in contemporary american politics. >> do you think you would like him? >> i think i do. i do like him. >> personally from what you know of him. >> i think yeah. it was a courser age and he is the kind of level of level of coarse humor and sort of disreputable living i think i would have a hard time as a married man sort of accepting. >> do you have kids? >> i have kids. two daughters. and i would keep them far away from my daughters. he was a bit of a letch. but i think he's a very warm witty guy. he's tactless and assertive but

very well loved by his friends. he also had a lot of enemies, particularly those who were his superiors. >> the cover we have, is that the only likeness we have? >> there are no likenesses of him from life. this was a done a few years after his death based on his descriptions of people who knew him. but it's probably most of them agree fairly closely. and there are some descriptions of him his wife wrote a letter to him the only letter we have from her hand when he was away in rome describing the birth of their young son. saying he has jet black hair just like you. so there are a number of descriptions that we have of them. i think that's the most convincing. >> what's your next book? >> i have a couple of ideas. i'm thinking about doing something again on the italian renaissance which i love or

branching out to something else and i haven't entirely decided. i wouldn't mind mining this territory as long as possible. there are many great characters and figures from the age. >> you've got to go back to florence and try some of the key ante. >> that's another reason to mine this particular territory. >> our guest hass been miles j. you thinker. the author of machiavelli. biography. thank you very muff. >> well, thank you. -- very much. >> thank you.

>> coming up japanese prime minister gives fair well remarks and takes questions at the prime minister's office in tokyo. after that a discussion on anti-terror laws. and later, a look at the u.s. response to terrorism and the myths surrounding radical on tuesday republican presidential candidate and former massachusetts governor mitrom my will announce his jobs plan. his speech comes two days before president obama's address to a joint session of congress. live coverage begins at 3:30 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span radio and c-span.org. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national ca