Great Books
Discourse on Method
Forty pages, written in French so that anyone could read them, in which a soldier and mathematician decides to doubt everything he has been taught and see what is still...
Novum Organum
The book that told Europe to stop arguing about the world and start testing it. It is impatient, arrogant, and it worked.
The Complete Plays
Thirty-eight plays, written fast, for money, for an open-air theatre with no lighting and a paying crowd that would riot if bored. They are still the last word on almost...
The Courtier
A book about how to behave, written by a diplomat who spent his life watching people get it wrong. It gave Europe the idea that the highest accomplishment is the...
Discourses on Livy
Machiavelli's other book: longer, harder, and the one he cared about. It is not about how to seize power. It is about how a free people keeps it.