Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli's Lifelong Quest for Freedom

"It’s hard not be intrigued by Niccolò Machiavelli, a man whose name is synonymous with evil genius in many European languages. His most famous work, The Prince , has been recommended a number of times on Five Books. Erica Benner’s Be Like the Fox , which came out in paperback this year, blew me away for a number of reasons. One, Niccolò comes across as such an enthusiastic, principled, humorous character; it’s hard not to find him immensely likeable as you live through the ups and downs of his life with him. Secondly, this period when Italy was the battleground of Europe, the Pope out of control and the Medicis up to this, that and the other, is just fascinating, and one I’ve long wanted to know more about. Lastly, the style Erica Benner uses to tell this story is immensely appealing. I’m a huge fan of primary sources, i.e., if you want to know about Machiavelli, just read Machiavelli. The problem is, if you don’t know enough of the history, you’re constantly looking up footnotes or doing searches on Wikipedia (“Who was Cesare Borgia?”) which is disruptive. What Erica Benner does is incorporate direct quotes of Machiavelli’s into her account. So I am reading both the original, and an interpretation at the same time. I really couldn’t put this book down. Many awful things happen in the world, and I am always keen to understand how they happen, I suppose in the hope that will make it less likely they happen again in future. For this reason, I consider We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch, about the Rwandan genocide, one of the best books I’ve ever read. Syria’s civil war is an equally upsetting subject, and that’s why I regard this as an extremely important book. The author, Nikolaos van Dam, is a Dutch diplomat and Syria specialist. English is probably his 3rd or 4th language, so it’s not a book you turn to for its lyrical writing, nor for heart-breaking stories of individuals who have lost everything in the catastrophe. But in its analysis, it’s absolutely top notch. All the questions I had about the Syrian civil war—why it happened, whether it could have been avoided, why a UK-trained ophthalmologist could be the perpetrator of such violence and why so many people have been killed—were answered. And those were questions I felt I needed to know the answers to."