Machiavelli on Modern Leadership

by Michael A. Ledeen

Book Overview

Niccolo Machiavelli, one of the eminent minds of the Italian Renaissance, spent much of a long and active lifetime trying to determine and understand what exceptional qualities of human character--... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031220471X
• ISBN13: 9780312204716
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

For leaders

Look for how to lead and why you need to lead this way by looking to Machiavelli. His penchant for grace isn't based on masturbatory tenets but on virtue. Leaders such as Moses, Reagan, Thatcher, Walesa, Mandela, Havel and Pope John Paul II are regularly referred to and exhibited as who to model yourself after if you choose to lead. They show what needs to be to done and how through 188 pages, by the hegemenous and peripatetic Michael A. Ledeen, with erudite brevity. This book should empower and engage the reader to be the best type of leader, one who never surrenders, yet nourishes dreams with faith and never yields to despair.

"Machiavellian Leader" has a whole new meaning

This book is not just for leaders, but anyone living in a democracy, simply because you get to vote for your leaders. This book gives one a whole new outlook on what a good leader should be like - not kind and caring as Greek Gods and kings of lore and old history were, but tough and pragmatic. Numerous examples of this are given throughout the book, noting modern leaders from Winston Churchill to Pope John Paul II. I liked the author's easy-to-read style as well, and the book is itself so encouraging that by the end of the first few chapters I was itching to read The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, and dying to play a game of bridge (read the book - you'll find out).

Great Book

A non cynical and practical view of how Machiavelli's principles of statecraft are applicable to everyday life. The author's use of modern figures lends credence to his arguments.

Michael Ledeen: right on!

Originally, I bought this book as a gift for my girlfriend, because she is a big fan of philosophy. I wasn't expecting much, but thought it might be a fun read. Our first impression of Mr. Ledeen was that he was way out there. He has very strong opinions of how the world works. He loves Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for instance. LOVES them. But after reading the book through, and then reading the original Machiavelli's "the prince," we determined that Michael Ledeen knew exactly what he was talking about! We also decided to learn more about Michael Ledeen, so we went online. We went to a web site about him and learned that the man has a double Phd in Philosophy and history respectively. We found his e-mail address and send him a note, expressing our enjoyment of his book. He promptly replied BACK to us and explained his views on the George W. Bush presidency. This book is fun, interesting, true to Machilavelli completely, and Mr. Ledeen makes a good comparison of the modern time with the time in which Machiavelli lived.

Unlimited applications to every "boss" you've ever known!

Machiavelli on Modern Leadership by Michael A. Ledeen is one of the most entertaining and instructive books I've read. It's one that I am going to keep at hand because I am sure to be going back to it time and again. It's also the perfect book to buy for your friends-and your enemies. Ledeen serves up Machiavelli's thoughts on the makings of a leader in easily digestible morsels, garnished with wonderful (good and bad) examples from the modern world of politics, government, military life, business, sports, religion. He has so much fun at this game that you inevitably start playing along with him, applying Machiavelli's rules to all the "bosses" you've ever known in your own life. With this book in hand you can also gain a new perspective on all the political figures you have learned to love and hate. Many world figures have already been dispassionately dissected for you by Ledeen, but you will find yourself looking around for others on whom Machiavelli would have conferred his seal of approval or disapproval.Looking back over my own life, I found many classic Machiavellian examples, especially of the "bad" prince, in that terrible Communist world I left behind in 1978. Machiavelli tells us that, because men are more disposed toward evil than toward good, the supreme leaders are bloody minded; that is exactly how Nikita Khrushchev, one of my "supreme bosses" from my other life, looked to me, both when he was sober and when he was drunk. The Machiavellian man uses change and flexibility to stay on top, but the Soviet bloc leaders I knew were increasingly dogmatic and inflexible, culminating with Leonid Brezhnev, who acted like a mechanical puppet (as does Boris Yeltsin today). Or take another of Ledeen's points, in which Machiavelli recommends avoiding the mistake of believing that all men are the same, no matter where they may live. When given a private tour of Macy's department store in New York, my former Romanian boss, Nicolae Ceausescu, believed the displays had been specially set up for him, because that was what he would have done to impress a foreign visitor to his Communist Romania. Today, when Yeltsin appointed the bloody KGB general Sergey Stepashin as prime minister of Russia, I pondered the fact that in the last four centuries all Russian/Soviet tsars have turned to their political police to defend their thrones. When I looked into Ledeen's book to see if Machiavelli also had an answer for that, there it was: "Machiavelli very badly wants to believe that a great leader can almost always be confident about his ability to win, provided that he has studied history carefully."During the 20 years that Michael Ledeen has been my friend, we have often worked together to fight the evils of Soviet Communism-and today's crypto-Communism-by using Machiavelli's weapons, and I have always been sure he would some day write the ultimate contemporary book on Machiavelli. Ledeen has so admired this em