Five hundred years ago, in a quiet farmhouse on the outskirts of Florence, a lonely retired diplomat, Niccolo Macchiavelli, wrote his timeless masterpiece The Prince, which he dedicated to Lorenzo, nephew of the reigning Pope. It became a 16th Century classic about political power in Renaissance Italy and is still widely read by modern scholars, students and politicians all over the world. While Macchiavelli has been dead for five centuries, his ideas live on. However, being a product of the times, his ideas may not be as relevant today as they were during his time. Nevertheless, this book celebrates 500 years since Macchiavelli first wrote "The Prince" in 1513. And like "The Prince," it looks at how political power is shaped by people and events that laid the foundations of our modern society, in a way that perhaps Macchiavelli may have written it if he had lived in today's world. A Macchiavellian Guide to Political Leadership is a practical roadmap for those who aspire to leadership roles in government, business and professional associations.

At the beginning of the 20th Century, no one could have predicted men walking on the moon, transcontinental jet air travel and of course, the personal computer revolution. And yet, all this happened before the close of the 20th Century. We are now at the beginning of a new century, but what lies ahead is anyone's guess. This book takes us on a whirlwind tour of human progress and achievement, highlighting many astonishing new ideas that may transform our lives during the course of the 21st Century.