The Prince

A shocking study on the practice of ruling a country and the nature of power, The Prince is a sixteenth-century treatise by Italian diplomat and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli, and one of the first works of modern political philosophy. It stood in direct conflict with the prevailing ideas on politics and ethics of its time, expressing a belief that the aims of princes—justify the use of immoral means, and that it is permissible to use force, rather than law, to achieve such ends.

The first printed edition of The Prince appeared in 1532, five years after its author's death. It is his best-known work, responsible for bringing into usage the term 'Machiavellian', and the immortality of this controversial, classic text is a subject of discussion to this day.