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 re