Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win.

We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Įveryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). Unger’s edged prose shows us a clear Michelangelo emerging from the stone of history. Michelangelo outlived numerous popes (his relationships with them were significant), local rulers and families, and other notable artists. We also see Michelangelo’s ferocious work habits and perfectionism and his ascetic lifestyle, which didn’t really change until later in his life when his financial situation became more comfortable. Readers will find it astonishing how many of Michelangelo’s letters remain he died in 1564, the year of the birth of Shakespeare, who left no letters (or other manuscript material). Unger describes his contentious relationships with members of his own family, especially his hectoring letters to his siblings. We marvel, too, at his mastery of so many different types of media. Unger excels at showing us the artist at work: his reluctance, his caginess, his temperament (easily hurt and angered, he sometimes tried to run away) and his jealousies (da Vinci and Raphael among them). This last varied widely: The Sistine ceiling brought cries of admiration Last Judgment elicited cries of another sort-another painter disguised some nudity. The author tells us about the idea, the creation (Michelangelo was notoriously secretive about his work and did not like others, especially his patrons, looking in and making suggestions), the political and interpersonal difficulties he faced, and the public receptions.

The six works that Unger focuses on include Pietà, David, the Sistine ceiling, Medici Tombs, Last Judgment and St. Michelangelo di Lodovico di Buonarroti Simone (1475-1564) was a cantankerous genius whose works emerged not just from Italian marble, but from the even more adamantine stone of the political realities of his time. Art historian and journalist Unger ( Machiavelli, 2011, etc.) organizes his life of Michelangelo by focusing on six masterpieces of varying media that compose the pillars of his creative life.

Machiavelli by Miles J. Unger