A ruler who wishes to survive must learn how not to be good, and this simple, scandalous observation overturned centuries of pious political counsel in a single stroke. Written in 1513 during exile from Florence, by a man who had been tortured on the strappado by the very family to whom he dedicated the manuscript, the treatise carries the bruised clarity of one who has seen power from both sides. Its lessons are drawn not from scripture but from Roman history and recent warfare, from ruthless campaigns and the ruin of those who trusted in fortune rather than force. The book has been called wicked for five centuries, but its true offence is simpler: it describes the world as it is, not as the virtuous wish it were.