Toward the end of the astonishing period of Athenian creativity that furnished Western civilization with the greater part of its intellectual, artistic, and political wealth, Plato wrote The Republic, his discussion of the nature and meaning of justice and of the ideal state and its ruler. All subsequent European thinking about these subjects owes its character, directly or indirectly, to this most famous (and most accessible) of the Platonic dialogues....

A new translation of the infamous classic, now in a striking deluxe edition. "The Prince" shocked 16th-century Europe with its advocacy of ruthless tactics for gaining absolute sovereignty, and it retains its power to alarm and to instruct.

Few books in the history of the world have had a stronger, more lasting, or more errant impact than Machiavelli's The Prince. Over the centuries, the ideal ruler as outlined by Machiavelli has been seen as a ruthless, immoral tyrant, but scholar and political philosopher Philip Bobbitt argues that this is a misunderstanding. He describes The Prince as one half of a masterpiece which, along with Machiavelli's often neglected Discourses, prophesied...