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37 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unlimited applications to every "boss" you've ever known!, May 21, 1999
By A Customer
Machiavelli on Modern Leadership by Michael A. Ledeen is one of the most entertaining and instructive books I've read. It's one that I am going to keep at hand because I am sure to be going back to it time and again. It's also the perfect book to buy for your friends-and your enemies. Ledeen serves up Machiavelli's thoughts on the makings of a leader in easily digestible morsels, garnished with wonderful (good and bad) examples from the modern world of politics, government, military life, business, sports, religion. He has so much fun at this game that you inevitably start playing along with him, applying Machiavelli's rules to all the "bosses" you've ever known in your own life. With this book in hand you can also gain a new perspective on all the political figures you have learned to love and hate. Many world figures have already been dispassionately dissected for you by Ledeen, but you will find yourself looking around for others on whom Machiavelli would have conferred his seal of approval or disapproval. Looking back over my own life, I found many classic Machiavellian examples, especially of the "bad" prince, in that terrible Communist world I left behind in 1978. Machiavelli tells us that, because men are more disposed toward evil than toward good, the supreme leaders are bloody minded; that is exactly how Nikita Khrushchev, one of my "supreme bosses" from my other life, looked to me, both when he was sober and when he was drunk. The Machiavellian man uses change and flexibility to stay on top, but the Soviet bloc leaders I knew were increasingly dogmatic and inflexible, culminating with Leonid Brezhnev, who acted like a mechanical puppet (as does Boris Yeltsin today). Or take another of Ledeen's points, in which Machiavelli recommends avoiding the mistake of believing that all men are the same, no matter where they may live. When given a private tour of Macy's department store in New York, my former Romanian boss, Nicolae Ceausescu, believed the displays had been specially set up for him, because that was what he would have done to impress a foreign visitor to his Communist Romania. Today, when Yeltsin appointed the bloody KGB general Sergey Stepashin as prime minister of Russia, I pondered the fact that in the last four centuries all Russian/Soviet tsars have turned to their political police to defend their thrones. When I looked into Ledeen's book to see if Machiavelli also had an answer for that, there it was: "Machiavelli very badly wants to believe that a great leader can almost always be confident about his ability to win, provided that he has studied history carefully." During the 20 years that Michael Ledeen has been my friend, we have often worked together to fight the evils of Soviet Communism-and today's crypto-Communism-by using Machiavelli's weapons, and I have always been sure he would some day write the ultimate contemporary book on Machiavelli. Ledeen has so admired this eminent mind of the Italian Renaissance that he has himself become the perfect American Machiavelli. Ion Mihai Pacepa (former adviser to Ceausescu and acting chief of his espionage service)
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17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Michael Ledeen: right on!, October 30, 2001
By A Customer
Originally, I bought this book as a gift for my girlfriend, because she is a big fan of philosophy. I wasn't expecting much, but thought it might be a fun read. Our first impression of Mr. Ledeen was that he was way out there. He has very strong opinions of how the world works. He loves Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for instance. LOVES them. But after reading the book through, and then reading the original Machiavelli's "the prince," we determined that Michael Ledeen knew exactly what he was talking about! We also decided to learn more about Michael Ledeen, so we went online. We went to a web site about him and learned that the man has a double Phd in Philosophy and history respectively. We found his e-mail address and send him a note, expressing our enjoyment of his book. He promptly replied BACK to us and explained his views on the George W. Bush presidency. This book is fun, interesting, true to Machilavelli completely, and Mr. Ledeen makes a good comparison of the modern time with the time in which Machiavelli lived.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Read, But Check the Facts, May 3, 2006
This review is from: Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are As Timely And Important Today As Five Centuries Ago (Paperback)
When you read a book like this, it can be judged by the facts you know to be true or false. The author made serious factual error regarding that Bill Gates invent the BASIC programming language (like Al Gore saying he invented the Internet). His comment, "...Mata Hari have famously been exceptional espionage agents", is grossly wrong. Mata (Margaretha Gertrude Mac Leod) was a prostitute who worked for the Germans and the French. She did a bad job at it, both sides knew she was a double agent and in the end the French shot her. The rest was myth.
On the other hand, the commandment "thou shalt not murder" is correct versus "thou shalt not kill". The Hebrew words for murder and kill are only slightly different, but absolutely unambiguous. And unlike the New Testament, the Torah has not gone through tons of alterations. There are other facts that are easily verified or refuted.
So why read it? If you read "The Prince", you better know your history (but I strongly recommend you read it first). Michael A. Ledeen uses modern day examples to help illustrate Machiavelli's insights. This should make it much easier to understand. But if you wonder about the facts behind the example, do check it out yourself and don't take the authors words as Gospel.
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