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- Machiavelli in Hell
- Sebastian de Grazia
- Picador 1992
- pp. 497
- [ political philosophy, biography ]
-
- _Machiavelli in Hell_ is as much an exposition of Machiavelli's
- philosophy as a biography, smoothly moving backwards and forwards from
- events in his life to his political and religious ideas. The result is a
- complex but rewarding outline of one man's view of the world. Almost all
- the information is drawn from Machiavelli's writings themselves (the
- almost 100 pages of notes consist solely of the original Italian for all
- the quotations). A very well written study of a very interesting person,
- I strongly recommend _Machiavelli in Hell_ to anyone interested in
- political philosophy or Italian history, and those with a general
- interest in biography won't be disappointed.
-
- Just two minor complaints, the absence of a bibliography and the absence
- of a map. I feel that anyone interested enough to want to look at the
- original texts would certainly be interested in a bibliography, or at
- least some suggestions for further reading. Given the number of black
- and white photographs throughout the text it wouldn't seem unreasonable
- to expect a map of Italy - since I bought my copy from the bestseller
- stack in my local bookshop it seems unlikely that all the book's readers
- will be familiar with the geography of central Italy.
-
- Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au)
- 29/1/93
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