Machiavelli in Hell
Sebastian de Grazia
Picador 1992
pp. 497
[ political philosophy, biography ]

_Machiavelli in Hell_ is as much an exposition of Machiavelli's
philosophy as a biography, smoothly moving backwards and forwards from
events in his life to his political and religious ideas.  The result is a
complex but rewarding outline of one man's view of the world.  Almost all
the information is drawn from Machiavelli's writings themselves (the
almost 100 pages of notes consist solely of the original Italian for all
the quotations).  A very well written study of a very interesting person,
I strongly recommend _Machiavelli in Hell_ to anyone interested in
political philosophy or Italian history, and those with a general
interest in biography won't be disappointed.  

Just two minor complaints, the absence of a bibliography and the absence
of a map.  I feel that anyone interested enough to want to look at the
original texts would certainly be interested in a bibliography, or at
least some suggestions for further reading.  Given the number of black
and white photographs throughout the text it wouldn't seem unreasonable
to expect a map of Italy - since I bought my copy from the bestseller
stack in my local bookshop it seems unlikely that all the book's readers
will be familiar with the geography of central Italy.  

Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au)
29/1/93