Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli in His Worldby Erica BennerWW Norton, 2017When historian Garrett Mattingly wasn't calling infamous Renaissance writer Niccolò Machiavelli “a drab little servant of a third-rate state,” he was lamenting that Machiavelli is one of the most misunderstood figures in all of history. That was nearly 60 years ago. Sebastian De Grazia, in his surreal and brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning 1989 biography Machiavelli in Hell, urged his readers that Machiavelli, like his Renaissance peers Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonorotti, was great enough to be known only by his first name, “simply Niccolò” – and lamenting to those same readers that Machiavelli is a drastically misunderstood figure in need of rediscovery. Even back in 1933, Ralph Roeder was lamenting the same thing in his magnificent and best-selling book Man of the Renaissance. When it comes to pitching books, there's a solid tradition of perpetually describing Machiavelli as misunderstood and in need of redemption.And that tradition is as old as it possibly could be, since Machiavelli himself initiated it as soon as he lost his state office in the Florentine government in 1512. He was imprisoned and briefly tortured by the Medici in 1513, then retired to his country estate, where he dreamed and yearned to be back in the flow of power, and where he filled his spare time in writing The Prince, the little tract that would go on not only to forever overshadow all the other things he wrote (including some of the best, most lively letters of the entire Italian Renaissance) but also turn his name into an adjective and himself into a byword for cold-blooded state treachery and pragmatism raised to the level – or sunk to the depth – of amorality.Machiavelli scholar Erica Benner seeks to contradict that easy picture, to complicate and enhance it – to, you guessed it, redeem the man by pointing out how misunderstood he is.She does an excellent job on both counts, and she manages it mainly in two ways. First, she adopts a looser biographical style than, say, Christopher Celenza's 2015 book Machiavelli: A Portrait or similar books. She tells her story in an unadorned present tense, which keeps the narrative moving briskly along, and she takes liberal detours inside the minds of her main characters, especially Machiavelli himself. And she takes the risk of reconstituting spoken dialogue from time to time – always to good, almost novelistic effect, but jarring nevertheless in a work of serious biography. When Machiavelli goes on a diplomatic mission to Milan to meet Caterina Sforza (“a fully fledged prince, a ruler with a regal title who has the power to make, bend, and break laws almost at will”), Benner narrates it like we're watching a newsreel:

… Niccolò ambles out to the piazza, where rows of vendors stand hawking pictures of their local celebrity. Men scurry about the square cordoning off the edges. Some kind of spectacle is about to begin. A crowd gathers behind the barrier. Then a flourish of trumpets and a quick-march roll of drums, and hundreds of men burst into the piazza. Five hundred of Caterina's best infantrymen put on a fine show, displaying their weapons, marching and turning in perfect step. Their plumed commander, it seems, is a Naldi, one of the clan the Florentines suspect of troublemaking around their borders. They are about to go north to Milan to help defend Duke Ludovico, together with fifty crossbowmen who perform an equally impressive muster. To Niccolò's untrained eye, they look like top-notch, disciplined troops. Later, he asks around and hears that Caterina herself oversees their training and command. It seems Countess Sforza Riario is a close student of military arts, not just a fierce fighter; she understands the need for careful training, for order. By themselves, ferocity and stubbornness get you only so far.

The second way Benner keeps her book nimbly dancing along is by consistently being a fantastic reader of Machiavelli's very varied literary output. Benner wrote Machiavelli's Prince and also Machiavelli's Ethics – she's as well-versed in this author's writing style and writing mind as readers could ask of any biographer, and it shows every time she writes about the man's works instead of the man himself:

The second half [of his Florentine Histories] is a masterpiece of subtle, sotto voce criticism of the present Medici rulers' forebears, in the style of ancient historians who could not write freely about the emperors. While giving Cosimo and Lorenzo due credit for their merits, Machiavelli shows how their family grew great by cultivating networks of friends with lavish lending and spending, and by straining the laws to the breaking point. His histories are not partisan: they don't pretend that Florence's early years as a republic were a golden age of liberty and justice, or blame the Medici for stealing the government from the people. They hold up a brutally honest mirror to all Florentines.

Be Like the Fox is likewise brutally honest in its appraisals of all the people in Machiavelli's life, from princes to popes … all the people except one, that is: like most people who've written about Machiavelli in the last century or more, Benner a very visible fund of affection for the man, a waiting warmth of sympathy for the horrible turns his life took right when another man might have been readying himself for the joys of comfortable retirement. This fund of affection is perfectly natural; the combination of Machiavelli's uniformly beautiful writing style and the unassuming friendliness of the famous Santi di Tito portrait – plus all those amazing, gregarious, thoroughly alive letters – makes Machiavelli an immensely human and empathetic figure. Someone we want to know and hope to like – even if that might lead to the occasional misunderstanding.