c-span radio, and [inaudible] [unintelligible] -- c-span.org. >> here is our live schedule. saturday, the flight 93 national memorial dedication ceremony from pennsylvania. sunday morning, a memorial ceremony from the world trade center site with president obama and former president bush. then and vice-president biden from the pentagon. c-span3 honoring those that lost their lives on united flight 93. that is this weekend on the c- span network. >> this week, miles unger

discusses his latest book about market valley. the book is an exploration of the noted italian philosopher and playwright machiavelli. >> miles unger, your book about machiavelli. a market for this at this stage in the world? guest: i think there's always a market for machiavelli. of all the renaissance writers you can think of, he's the most quoted and there's more titles with machiavelli's name with unusual contexts, machiavelli for businessmen, how to manage like machiavelli, machiavelli for relationships. you name it, machiavelli's name comes up. he's one of the few men, one of the few names that really comes down -- has come into 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 in history. host: what's the misunderstanding? guest: machiavelli has become an adjective. i doubt there are very many people in this town who would like to be described as machiavelli and i have a feeling many of them read the print secretly at the dark of night, next to their bedside but not too many people would call themselves machiavellians. they might call themselves pragmatists or realists but very few people want to be called machiavellian because he's been associated with a kind of underhanded, cynical, manipulative approach, not only to politics, but to life, as well, and i don't think this is really what he was about. but it's a natural misunderstanding and one that goes very early back to really

the first years after his death where he was called an enemy of the human race, the finger of satan. so there's certainly always a fascination for people who have that kind of reputation. host: when did you get interested in him? guest: it's interesting you ask that. i thought back to this, i was giving a talk shortly after i completed the book and it had come out, and i realized i had written a paper when i was in 10th or 11th grade on machiavelli and i was living in florence at the time and my fascination stems from that era but my fascination with him in particular, i was -- had this notion that he was not the man he was purported to be, he was not this villainous character, but rather somebody who was dealing with the sort of 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. i'm much more sophisticated, much more knowledgeable, but the idea that he was up to something other than the common perception of what he was up to is something that's always fascinated me. host: why were you living in florence at that time in your life? guest: 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 drownings and had a very romantic notion of florence and took her three kids after she got divorced and it was sort of a lark and for me, it was certainly a fascinating and i fell in love with the city, fell in love with the history, and i've, you know, gone back many times since then.

it's just, to me, i mean, florence is such a wonderful place to be, and it's just a beautiful, fascinating city full of sort of both violence and the height of civilization and lowest lows of human depravity. it's a fascinating era and you can still see that in the streets of florence. host: where was your home originally? guest: i moved around a lot. an off-and-on new yorker. my father was a college professor and we moved around. i was born in california. sort of parapatetic. i make my home in boston. host: how many books have you written and what were the others about? guest: before this book, i got in the florentine venice vein and the last book was on lorenzo de'medici called "magnifico" and sort of the defining figure over the renaissance, the man who

presided over florence in its golden age, known as lorenzo the magnificent and it captured the splendor and pageantry and artistic production of florence at that time and writing about lorenzo and the politics and machinations and violence beneath the surface, it was a natural -- machiavelli wrote extensively about lorenzo de'medici, lorenzo de'medici died when machiavelli was 23, so he knew him, probably knew him personally, knew his family, knew his sons, and certainly machiavelli seemed like a natural follow-on from that. host: what year was machiavelli born and where? guest: he was born in 1469 in the city of florence and florence was one of the five major states of renaissance italy. italy was a divided -- it was

not even a country. it was divided among five major powers and a host of duchies and principalities and petty states. florence was the weakest of the five. it was the most centrally located and probably the weakest, weakest of the kingdom, the duchy of milan of venice. you had naples to the south ruled by a spanish born family, then you had the papal states which surround florence on three sides and it was a precarious position for florence and during machiavelli's youth, lorenzo de'medici was a very adept politician, very adept diplomat, and he managed to keep all these balls 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 sweep in and cause chaos and destruction.

host: in your footnote, you say machiavelli lived to be 88. guest: he lived to be 58. host: maybe it's a misprint. guest: he died at 58. michelangelo lived to be 88. 58 for a man of that era is an average, perhaps above average lifespan. lorenzo de'medici lived to be 43. host: go through those 58 years and where was he and you write about the time, 14 years he was a public servant and prisoner. guest: 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, had a small estate outside florence and he managed his small patrimony, manage to eke a small living, enough to allow him to lead a life of leisure and machiavelli originally followed very much in his father's footsteps, as a

dilettante, he studied with a good humanist education which meant he learned latin, learned to memorize and read most of the great latin writers, cicero and virgil and seneca, and he had a good education but didn't accomplish much until he was 29 and it was only then, when the fall of savonarola, that he takes on a career in public service and does this for 14 years during a period in which florence had recovered its republican institutions. it had been dominated by the de'medici family for decades but in 1494, the medicky are exspelled and there's a four- year period where a great fire and brim stone preacher is running things in florence and with savonarola's execution,

right after that, machiavelli takes office, which suggests he belonged to the party opposed to savonarola and for that 14 years he serves as what i like to think of -- trying to think of an equivalent in today's politics -- a kind of undersecretary of state, roving diplomat, not a top, top member of the bureaucracy, but a fairly high official with fairly large responsibilities which continue to grow as he shows himself to be a capable, energetic and patriotic man. he does this for 14 years until de'medici return to florence on the backs of spanish lances. they've been trying for 14 years to get back into the city that expelled them and manage it after the flornetines backed the wrong army, the french army. one of the de'medicis, who's a

cardinal, and his brother, get the support of mercenaries to get into the city and machiavelli is booted out of office. a couple of months later he is imprisoned and tortured because his name crops up on a list of people in the pocket of somebody plotting to overthrow de'medici regime, a young man named boscoli, trying to gather fellow conspirators, and machiavelli's name is on the list. he was never approached by boscoli, and if he had been, machiavelli would have shut the door on his face because he's not big on conspiracies, he writes about them saying how often they fail and how dangerous they are. machiavelli could be a political agitator but he was

not somebody who believed in violent overthrow of legitimate government. he was very much a bureaucrat and i think one of the things about machiavelli, 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 is the first to articulate that view, that the french, reason of state, and he is the proponent of that kind of system. host: when did he marry? guest: he married in 1501, a young woman from the neighboring quarter of florence named marietta corsini who was probably slightly above him socially. we don't know that much about her because women were not really considered worthy of -- machiavelli didn't 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 business arrangement. she was from a suitable family, the corsini family, perhaps a little better established than the machiavelli family, perhaps less down at the heels so he was probably moving up a bit when he married her. host: children? guest: 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 a conventional marriage. he was quite a philanderer. he liked visiting the whore houses. he was serially unfaithful. his wife seemed to put up with this, partly because that was expected of a good wife. she was almost certainly a decade or so younger than he

was. men married in their late 20's and women in their late teens, so the difference in age meant that he was probably much more worldly and sophisticated man and she was -- one of the interesting things you have about her, one of the few things we know about her, she complained often that he was never around. he was always going off on these trips to the court of france and she complained that he wasn't there for her, which suggests that when he was there, she enjoyed his company and they had a good family life and they did produce six children so they managed to spend a good deal of time together. host: i have a question about where you find this stuff. i know it's not "stuff," the material in the book. how do you know 500 years later that he visited a house of prostitution? guest: because he wrote about it.

machiavelli was not shy about exposing his own peccdillos. one of the great things about machiavelli is his kind of 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. there are many letters from his friends talking about his wonderful sense of humor, which was rather course, and he writes this awful letter of an experience he had while he was away in which he visited a prostitute in the dark and he was sold some procurious came and said i have a lovely young thing for you, pay two duckets and you can have her and of course it transpires that when he turns on the light, she's an old toothless hag, and this is the kind of humor and sort of earthy stuff, machiavelli and

his friends trafficked in. it was not a victorian age by any means. it was very earthy, scurrilous things you probably can't say on tv. so we do know he reported on his various loves, his affairs, and his friends did, as well. they often teased him, you know, 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 humorous but he was no saint in his personal behavior. host: do you have any idea how many people were in the world 500 years ago? guest: many four than -- fewer than today. i don't know the answer. host: do you have any idea around florence? guest: florence was surprisingly small. considering if you think about

florence and how florence looms in the culture of the west, civilization, it's surprising that it was a city of less than 50,000 people at the time that machiavelli lived there. i don't know what it compares to in terms of very small american town, but it produced brunelleschi and da vinci, michelangelo, donatello, dante -- the list of geniuses in a population that small is incredibly impressive, and almost inexplicable. but it was a small town and had been larger in the middle ages. it was decimated by the black plague in the 14th century and its population probably shrunk by half so at its peak in the 14th century it was probably a city of 100,000. host: what would happen if the 538 people who have a seat in the house and the senate and the three that don't have voting that are representatives

read your book and thought through what machiavelli said back in those years and also read "the prince." what could they learn from it? guest: despite his reputation, the greatest contribution machiavelli has made to political thought is sort of to look at things practically. the philosophers that came before him, those who wrote about politics before him going back to plato and aristotle and st. thomas aquinas believed essentially that the world and politics and human society really advanced and was really based on something rational. for the greeks, reason, both aristotle and plato thought that reason ruled the way the world worked and the way human societies worked and he said

that politics is the knowledge by which we make men good. that is not machiavelli's philosophy. machiavelli believed and he says this, he says that many have believed, have 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, untrustworthy, known -- no one has a monopoly on the truth. this is why we have to balance one group against another, this is why we have our checks and our balances. madison famously said, in one of the federal papers -- i

don't remember which -- that ambition must be made to counteract ambition, and by that balancing of opposing interests, this is how we form a more perfect union and i think this is something that really goes back to machiavelli's notion of looking at men as they really are, as selfish, men who work for their own interests. host: the people that wrote our constitution, did they read machiavelli? guest: we know john adams did because he wrote about machiavelli. the other ones, there's no or very little direct testimony but we know they read people who read machiavelli, particularly a group of english political philosophers known as the commonwealth men, and the commonwealth men came out of the english liberal tradition and were the sort of people like john locke. there's a famous treatise most of the founding fathers had in their libraries called "cato's letters" which is a long passage about machiavelli and why we should not regard

machiavelli as a philosopher of evil as he had been believed but as a man who are showing us that men are selfish that we may guard against it, 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 on the way our constitution was framed. host: i have a copy here of "the prince." do you have any idea how many of these have been sold in 500 years? guest: no. i would say it was a best seller shortly after his death, particularly after it was put on the index of prohibited books by the pope. host: why did the pope prohibit the book to be read by catholics? guest: in 1559 was the counter reformation, the reaction to and the response to martin luther and the reformation and the church was trying to reform

its ways and to combat the growing threat of protestantism by reviving the church and sort of fighting back and one of the things they wanted to do was crack down on dissent to 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 discourse where is 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, thereby stirring the pot or making it impossible for italy

to develop a unified government so machiavelli was very tough on him. host: was he religious? guest: he was not -- he paid lip service to religion and many people have asked over the years whether machiavelli was an atheist or not. my own sense is that machiavelli didn't care enough about religion to be an atheist. he didn't care for metaphysics. he was outwardly conventional though there are times he says i don't attend mass like i know you do, he wrote to one of his friends. he often made fun of religious people. he thought they were corrupt, as they were, as you know, the renaissance popes, they were -- borgia who acknowledged his own children and sictus the 12. giovanni de'medici was a

cardinal. lorenzo de'medici's son was made a religious leader as a political favor to him and it's not entirely the church's fault. the church was stuck between a rock and a hard place because they were the spiritual leader of christendom but they were also a state, a political entity that had to fight for its territories, fight for its life like any other territory so they were caught betwixt and between trying to be the spiritual father to their flock and acting like a renaissance princeling. host: how often do you run into people that have never read "the prince"? guest: most people have sort of in school. you find it in interesting places. shortly after i started writing this book, my editors wrote me a clip of an article that lindsay lohan was carrying

around a copy of it with her everywhere. i don't know what she did with it. 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, you know, the gad fly, the guy who's not going to put up with funny business, who's going to puncture the piety and the assumptions, and in a way, you know, any time sort of, you know, talked about how people are basically good, people will believe that but there are the other types of people who believe people are basically scoundrels and you have 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 a visceral level. host: where did you get your education?

guest: informally, i got my education largely in florence. i went to brandeis and i was an art major. i wrote about art for many years before i went back to my original love of history and italian renaissance history in particular. host: how do you make your living? guest: as a writer. host: no teaching? guest: i have taught before and i used to be a journalist and an editor at a paper but right now i earn my living writing. host: where were you a journalist? guest: i edited an art magazine called "art new england" for many years and i wrote for the "new york times" for many years and numerous other publications along the way and i also taught some. teaching was not my calling. i prefer sitting there in front of a computer. host: what happened to mom in all this?

is she still alive? guest: she died some years ago. we eventually decided we couldn't financially manage to stay in italy. it was a lark, as i said, a spontaneous thing, and i don't think my father appreciated it that much and he was paying child support to have his kids 3,000 miles away. it was not ideal for him. and so we stayed there 4 1/2 years, about, and i came back to complete high school in the united states. host: where are your siblings? guest: one of them lives in new york and the other actually lives in germany right now. he writes for "the economist" and goes all over the world. host: either one of them as interested in all this as you are? guest: no, i think i'm the one stuck with that period the most. even before i moved there, i was very interested in art and when you're in florence and surrounded by michelangelo and donatello, and my father is also a writer and historian and

has written many books. host: where does he live now? guest: he taught at n.y.u. for many years. he lives in new jersey. i came to history in a round- about way. host: what's his first name? guest: irwin unger. host: back to the prints. you have a photograph in the book, a couple of them, i'd ask you, did you take those by any chance? guest: i took some of them. host: the one i'm thinking of, where he wrote "the prince", the house. guest: yes, i did. host: where is that? guest: a little village 10 miles south of florence and i urge anyone going to florence to visit it because you can see it's a lovely countryside. machiavelli wasn't too happy

there, felt he was exiled there. that's machiavelli's house, very much the way it was when he lived there. if you have the concierge open up the house, and it's funny, because italians have so much history around them, they don't -- it's not like going to mount vernon with a big deal made of it, you have to go across the street and find someone to open the door for you and they'll show you around and they'll say, here's the desk where he wrote "the prince" and the village is very much the way it was in machiavelli's day. host: how much time did you spend there? guest: i spent a day there. a beautiful day trip out of florence sort of roaming, we walked around the olive fields, the vineyards. you can feel you're back in the 15th or 16th century, and to see the sort of the world through machiavelli's 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 was sort of he felt very much -- you can actually see florence. brunoewski's dome you can still see and the tower of the palace where he worked as the second chancellor of florence, you can still see and he must have sat there and mind and he talked about this and he would do anything to get back to work in florence. host: how old was he, after 14 years working for the government, how old was he when he lost his job? guest: about 45. host: how old was he when he wrote "the prince"? guest: he wrote it quickly thereafter because he was a man not suited to 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 recovered from the physical ordeal of the torture he had undergone, he was anxious to get back into the good graces of the people who now ran the government, de'medici were back in power and if he wanted to get back, have any position this government, he needed to ingratiate himself with de'medici. host: in "the prince" he writes a letter to lorenzo de'medici up front and he says this, "i realize there was nothing more precious or important to me than my knowledge of great men and their doings." was he playing up to him? guest: partly. though he did this less well than most flatterers. machiavelli, despite the name, was very unmachiavellian. he was constantly advising princes to be deceitful and to

be underhanded but he in his own life was too frank for his own good. he told people unpleasant truths they didn't want to hear and in the case of "the prince," which was, in effect, a job application to get back. originally wrote it for guiliano de'medici and guiliano de'medici dies and his nephew takes over so the final dedication goes to lorenzo de'medici and he presents it to him as a job application. he says, here is the fruit -- i can't give you expensive gifts, i can't give you poetry but what i can give you is the wisdom accrued over 14 years of service to the government. >> is your original manuscript where? >> no.

it was not published in its sunday. -- in its sunday. -- in its own dauy. a few years after, he died. it was published. it was quite well known in intellectual circles in florence during his lifetime. it made him quite notorious among the florentine intelligence. >> is something out of chapter 15 -- it is a small book. >> that is one reason why it is so popular.

that is a classic formulation of machiavelli. he made the resin -- brought a reasonable assumption that no ruler can do anything unless he is in power and no ruler who always follows the path of virtue will remain in power long. he did say that the best thing for a ruler to do would not necessarily be always virtues but to appear virtuous. that is the case. appearing virtuous can be useful but being virtuous rarely is. >> the next chapter --

>> it is very applicable to today's situation. in order to ingratiate yourself with the people, you have to constantly spent on them and give them what they want and don't raise their taxes and of course you that they run out of money and you're stuck with a situation, like the fix we are in now, where we have to get revenues somewhere and stop spending enough -- neither of which is palatable to people who have been told they can have anything. >> in there -- in those days there was no electricity and telephones are ways to play music except live. do you have any idea when he was in that house how he wrote? what did they use in those days?

>> he used a quill pen, ink, and parchment or paper, probably paper. he was not rich after it lost his job and possibly complain about money. hero with a quill pen and paper. this was the early days of printing. it was the birth of printing in italy right around the time he was writing. the only book that was published in his lifetime was "the art of war." if people want to read it, there will be professional copyists. >> other other versions in print? >> i would imagine there are from the 1530's. i would love to have one.

>> put a time frame audit. he left the government when he was 45 and he died when he was 58 and he rode his bike in the 45- >> eroded very quickly. -- he wrote it very quickly. he said he had written this pamphlet and he hopes the medici will read it. he hoped they would allow him to roll stones for them. he had written a quickly but he was out of prison in february, 1513, and by december he claimed he had finished and was ready to send this. it was a it was in the heat of the moment. >> along had been in prison? >> he was in prison for about three weeks. the conditions were not good.

the worst about was that he was constantly threatened with being executed the couple of people implicated in the same plot he was he had read outside his window which was very unnerving for him. he was also tortured. the florentines favored teh strapado where they bound his arms behind his back and put you on a platform and pulled the platform out and dislocated your shoulders and rip your muscles. it was not pleasant. savanorola endure this as well. he cracked. machiavelli's seem to be made of sterner stuff apparently he did not have as much to confess. he was proud of how he came out and said he thought himself a

better man that he had before for having endured this. >> this is chapter 18 -- >> i think that is the definition of grudging respect. he had a grudging respect for pope alexander the was the same as rodrigo borja. this is one of machiavelli's points that he makes throughout and one thing that has given him a reputation for such wickedness. more than his defense of violence, his defense of why has

got into trouble over the years. he makes the point that alexander by lying managed to succeed where others more honest failed. which would rather have? the rule is job is to succeed. alexander succeeded. in the case of alexander, he also chastises him because he says his lies and success were only meant for his family. he contrasts this with julia's the second who was alexander's successors. he was equally duplicitous and violent but his lies and his violence or for the sake of the church, for the sake of something larger than pure nepotism. i think it is fair to say that machiavelli's attitude toward alexander was grudging with

respect and the emphasis is on grudging. >> , the pope's back then were married. >> none of them were married by many of them had children. one thing about rock thingborgia -- about run rego rodriguez -- rodrigo borgia - he was open about his mistresses. there are stories of orgies in the vatican which he and his son participated in, murders and the vatican. it was like rum under nero. -- it was like rome under nero, very bacchanal million.

there was the famous and mysterious lucretia borgia. people speculated that the plague came over with the ships of columbus. i don't know that was fair but it coincided with the french invasion a year or two after cephalus becomes a problem in italy and around the rest of europe. >> you say that rodrigo borgia who was pope alexander the sex created the seven deadly sins? >> one of the refreshing things is that many of his predecessors and successors were equally corrupt, he reveled in his corruption. he did not care who knew it.

he felt confident enough in himself and his power that he could get away with it. given the track record of people like sixtus the fourth who murdered his political enemies, it was safe for him to assume he could get away with it even when orola accused them, he did not being -- he did not mind being called a lustful, greedy, corrupt man. he said he was. >> put savanorola in context. he said he believed that christ spoke through his mouth. he was kind of an evangelist? >> he was a fundamentalist some have described him as a religious fanatic. he was a religious visionary.

he is an interesting character because he had very scary attributes and some admirable attributes. >> who was he? >> he was a dominican friar who came to florence in 1492 from ferrara which made a may foreigner. he gained a reputation as a fire and brimstone preacher calling on florentines to reform their ways and saying the judgment is at hand, fire and pestilence and flood will come. he got a good response because florentines felt a little guilty about their sybaritic life style, their corruption. he was very much an advocate for the poor and depressed. he gained a following among the poor. , the disenfranchised workers, the urban proletariat.

he was very much a democrat. he was responsible for restoring the democratic institutions of florence after the medici expulsion. he was dangerously convinced, i think, that god spoke for him he kept talking about his of martyrdom. he might have been emotionally unstable. through the four years that he ruled florence, he put them through the wringer. many people thought the second coming was about the common people had to reform their ways. he built a huge bonfire of the bat -- he built a huge bonfires of the vanities in the central part of florence. all the great cultural wealth of florence ended up being consumed in these huge bonfires. it was very much a reaction to the kind of corruption and

luxury of florence. >> did i read that he did not believe this stuff? >> when he was tortured, he claimed he was made to confess that he did not believe it but then he recanted. i think he did believe it. it is difficult to tell what people like savanorola where personal ambition and genuine belief separate. i think he was both a very ambitious but his ambition was for christ, a better world, and i think we see this in contemporary figures the mix religious and visionary quality is with messianic belief in themselves with politics. it is hard to know where believe and your personal ambition began. >> go back to the book you wrote.

contrast for you right where machiavelli wrote "the prince." where did you do it? >> i did research in italy and florence. i spent a lot of time at restaurants. i was getting a feel for the place. i like to go back and take one trip to drink in the atmosphere and the tnt. chianti. most of the circumstances are not quite as romantic. i spent a lot of time in front of the computer screen like many writers. fortunately, for something like this, there is a lot of material available. you have machiavelli paul's letters which is a wonderful read in the original italian or in english, they are full of

colorful tales and he is quite a storyteller himself. >> are they online? >> i have not found on line. >> where you go to get them? >> there are a couple of italian editions of his complete letters which i read and i believe there is also an english version. >> are you fluent in italian? >> yes, my speaking is rusty but my reading is still pretty good. 16th century tuscan is different from modern italian. >> this is a simon and schuster book, a big publisher, a name from 500 years ago, whose idea was this? >> it was originally my idea and shape as we went along. we had talked about maybe doing a book on savanoroola and machiavelli. it is interesting that two people who represent

diametrically opposed visions of the world or in the same place at the same time. one of the early chapters of the book, i talk about that point in which machiavelli is in the crowd while savanorola is preaching one of his hellfire sermons and machiavelli is commenting on it. he was sent there to write a report and report back to the ambassador in rome. the idea of those two people being there and have a completely opposite views of what made the world tick and what the world was about is a fascinating thing. that was pared down a bit to machiavelli. we were both interested in this period of florentine history. it is an endlessly fascinating. . >> do you have any idea how many copies of this book that the publisher thinks will sell?

>> i do not know how many they ran off. i stay away from the marketing end of things. >> what is the audience from their perspective? is this for colleges? >> it is also for people like biography of rousing tales, interesting figures from difference periods. people read biographies of cleopatra. there's an endless hunger for the biographies of the founding fathers. he is a very interesting guy and a very entertaining guide to be around. i enjoy spending a couple of years with them. >> here is a sentence from your book near the end --

how cynical was he? >> he had a rather skeptical view of human nature. he believed people were basically selfish, weak, fearful, pursued their own advantage by also had a very humane view of the human race. it comes through in his comedies -- he had a warm understanding of human nature. he said men are scoundrels in some sense but he also said we are animals pursuing our own basic needs.

he was accepting of human nature. that is one of the things that made him different from other people who had a bleak view of human nature like st. augustine who talks about how human beings are essentially wicked. machiavelli is much more accepting. he said it is impossible to go against what nature compels you to do. he is kind of an early door whenist, saying that -- he is in a early darwinist, saying that humans compete. he said it is not natural for humans not to exist like this. he was skeptical of human nature but also accepting. >> he took pleasure in scandalizing his readers, standing traditional nostrum's on their head and following the -- in single following conventional moralist's could lead to disaster. what would be the reaction if he came back today and saw that his

book was everywhere? >> i think he would get a kick out of it. he was very ambitious. he was not falsely modest. one thing that drove him was a sense of his own marginality in society. he always had to work at the behest of some rich, stupid man he had to court like lorenzo demedici and irritated him that they treated him with such sustained. i think he would've gotten a kick out of -- who remembers the lorenzo to a room he dedicated the book? >> did he ever get a job after he was thrown out of government? >> he was sent on missions after a number of years of being in

the political wilderness. he got a number of assignments julio de medici was more sympathetic. the cardinal basil became clear -- pope clement vii > he got some small consignments late in life and get back in the saddle, fighting for florentine independence in a difficult time. he never let got a steady job back buddy -- but late in life, he contributed something to this country. he was an ardent patriot. >> here is more of from"the prince."

again, what would he think -- if he came to this country today and look at what was going on? >> i think he would see a lot of pandering going on. he lived in a less squeamish age. the most hard-headed politician today, i don't think he would be be headed. machiavelli would look at our political system and see that there are many people who are afraid to tell the truth, "are afraid to do the hard work

necessary to get things done. he is not a big fan of pandering. he wrote a scathing indictment of those during period a war when france was trying to recall pisa and people were refusing to pay their taxes to fund the war. he said how can you claim to want to be free but will do nothing to bring this about? he would have been very harsh on the lack of civic mindedness that he would find in contemporary american politics. >> do you think you would like them? >> i think i would provide to like them. >> i mean, personally. >> i think yes. it would coarser age and there is a law coarse humor and ribaldry and disreputable living

that i would have a hard time accepting as a married man. >> do you have kids? >> i have two daughters. i would keep them far away from my daughters. he was it a thatlech. i think he is a very warm and witty guide. he was tactless and acerbic but he was very well loved by his friends and they yelled at a lot of his political superiors. >> is this the only like this we have of him? >> there are no likenesses of them from life. this was done a few years after his death based on description of people who knew him. most of them agree fairly closely and there are some inscriptions of them. his wife wrote a letter to him

when he was away and run describing the birth of their young son and saying he had jet black hair just like you. there are a couple of descriptions we have of him. that is the best of them and the most convincing bell was your next book? >> i have a couple of ideas. i'm thinking of doing something else in the italian renaissance or branching out to something else i have not decided. i would not mind mining this territory as much as possible. there are many great characters from the age. >> you have to go back to florence and ch moreianti. >> the parks are wonderful. >> our guest has been miles under, the of for of"monty and: machiavelli: a biography."

♪ >> for a dvd prague -- copy of this program calls 1-877-662- 7726. for free transcripts or to give your comments, visit us andqn da.org. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> coming up, we'll take your questions and comment "washington journal on." after that, a couple of town hall meetings starting with democratic rep rep hobby of the serra and los angeles bread and rep allen west in palm beach gardens, florida and later, president obama in detroit where he is addressing a labor day rally on his efforts to create jobs.