SOURCE: An introduction to The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli, translated by Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., The University of Chicago Press, 1985, pp. vii–xxiv.

In the following essay, Mansfield provides an overview of The Prince, describing the work as "the most famous book on politics when politics is thought to be carried on for its own sake, unlimited by anything above it."

Anyone who picks up Machiavelli's The Prince holds in his hands the most famous book on politics ever written. Its closest rival might be Plato's Republic, but that book discusses politics in the context of things above politics, and politics turns out to have a limited and subordinate place. In The Prince Machiavelli also discusses politics in relation to things outside politics, as we shall see, but his conclusion is very different. Politics according to him is not limited by things above it, and things normally taken...