“I want to go to hell, not heaven. There I can enjoy the company of popes, kings and dukes, while paradise is inhabited only by beggars, monks and apostles” - who else could say this except the great Nicolo Machiavelli, author of the immortal book “The Prince” (“II Principe”) and the most “politically incorrect” "Formula of power: "The end justifies the means"! For many years, being the secretary of the Council of Ten of the Florentine Republic and carrying out the most important diplomatic assignments, Machiavelli knew the underbelly of power firsthand, and even after the collapse of his career, having lost the opportunity to engage in politics, he continued to explore its nature in his books, the main of which, “The Prince,” was published only five years after his death. And after another seven it was banned for the first time. Then it was banned countless times and everywhere, cursing the author as “the son of Satan,” “the prophet of tyranny,” and “the dark genius of the Renaissance.” But Machiavelli simply had the courage to write what they agreed with, but about which those in power preferred to remain silent - that the art of politics is outside of morality and religion, that Christian humility only weakens the state, giving it into the clutches of unopposed scoundrels, that in the struggle for power, all means are good, which means that in the end the end justifies the means... Read a new book from the author of the bestsellers “The Great Churchill” and “The Great Napoleon” - the best biography of the “dark genius of power”, whose precepts have been followed by politicians for half a thousand years.