The Prince (Summarized Edition)
Enriched edition. Virtù, Fortuna, and raison d'état: a Renaissance manual of Realpolitik and state founding from the Italian WarsBy Niccolò Machiavelli
Length1h 58m
About this audiobook
The Prince distills Machiavelli's hard-eyed observations of power into a terse handbook on founding, securing, and governing principalities. Eschewing scholastic abstractions, it blends classical exempla with reports from the Italian Wars, advancing a vocabulary of virtù, Fortuna, necessity, and raison d'état. Its prose is lapidary, aphoristic, and theatrical, alternating maxims with case studies—above all the career of Cesare Borgia. Situated against the humanist "mirror-for-princes" tradition, the treatise subverts moral didacticism by isolating political efficacy as an autonomous standard, while never entirely abandoning civic republican commitments voiced elsewhere in his oeuvre. Born in republican Florence and forged as a diplomat amid embassies to France, the Papal States, and the Empire, Niccolò Machiavelli witnessed the fractious calculus of Italian statecraft at first hand. After the Medici restoration in 1512, his dismissal, imprisonment, and exile to Sant'Andrea forced a turn from action to analysis. Written in 1513 and dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici, The Prince answers the problem of political founding under crisis and reflects a bid to reenter service, while drawing on Roman historians, chancery practice, and the hard pedagogy of failure. Recommended to readers of political theory and leadership, it rewards rigorous, unsentimental reflection on power.
Quickie Classics summarizes timeless works with precision, preserving the author's voice and keeping the prose clear, fast, and readable—distilled, never diluted. Enriched Edition extras: Introduction · Synopsis · Historical Context · Author Biography · Brief Analysis · 4 Reflection Q&As · Editorial Footnotes.
Audiobook details
GenrePolitics and Government
Length1 hr 58 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateJan 10, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Introduction
5Author Biography
2Introduction
6Machiavelli: The Prince
3Synopsis
7Analysis
4Historical Context
8Reflection
Das Buch der hundert altitalienischen NovellenNiccolò Machiavelli, Pietro Fortini, Carlo Graf Gozzi, Eustachio Manfredi, Baldassare Castiglione, Francesco Molza, Liberale Motense, Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, Luigi da Porto49h 26m$1 · $0.00
Mensch und StaatNiccolò Machiavelli3h 10m4.3 (29)$1 · $0.00
DER FÜRSTNiccolò Machiavelli3h 43m4.0 (455.4K)$1 · $0.00
Gesammelte Werke von Niccolò MachiavelliNiccolò Machiavelli39h 38m4.4 (124)$2 · $0.00
THE ART OF WAR & THE PRINCENiccolò Machiavelli7h 9m4.0 (1.8K)$1.99 · $0.00
Machiavelli: The PrinceNiccolò Machiavelli5h 13m4.1 (730.3K)$1.99 · $0.00
THE STRATEGY: The Art of War & The Prince (2 Classics in One Edition)Niccolò Machiavelli7h 7m4.3 (123)$1.99 · $0.00
Die Kunst der Staatsführung: Regieren mit WeisheitNiccolò Machiavelli, Platon, Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Carl von Clausewitz, Friedrich der Große, Benjamin Franklin, Otto von Bismarck, Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, Karel Čapek, Hans Delbrück238h 47m$1 · $0.00
RuhtinasNiccolò Machiavelli4h 4m4.0 (17.2K)$1.99 · $0.00
Philosophie der RenaissanceNiccolò Machiavelli, Michel de Montaigne, Erasmus von Rotterdam, Thomas Morus, Francis Bacon, Tommaso Campanella, Martin Luther, Ludwig Kuhlenbeck66h 17m$1.50 · $0.00
Das Buch der hundert altitalienischen NovellenNiccolò Machiavelli, Pietro Fortini, Carlo Graf Gozzi, Eustachio Manfredi, Baldassare Castiglione, Francesco Molza, Liberale Motense, Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, Luigi da Porto49h 28m$1 · $0.00
Essenzielle Klassiker der politischen PhilosophieNiccolò Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Friedrich der Große, Platon, Aristoteles, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tommaso Campanella, Thomas Morus, Samuel von Pufendorf, Abbé Castel de Saint-Pierre, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, Franz Mehring, Johann Most, John Henry Mackay, Rosa Luxemburg, Erich Mühsam393h 52m$1 · $0.00
Die Discorsi (Deutsche Ausgabe) (Kommentiert)Niccolò Machiavelli17h 53m$1 · $0.00
Der Fürst (Il Principe) (Kommentiert)Niccolò Machiavelli7h 3m4.0 (76.6K)$1 · $0.00
Mensch und Staat (Kommentiert)Niccolò Machiavelli3h 18m4.3 (121)$1 · $0.00
Gesammelte Werke: Der Fürst + Die Discorsi + Mensch und Staat + Geschichte von Florenz (Kommentiert)Niccolò Machiavelli39h 44m4.4 (11)$2 · $0.00
Geschichte von Florenz (Kommentiert)Niccolò Machiavelli19h 51m3.8 (508)$1 · $0.00
Discourses on Livy (Annotated)Niccolò Machiavelli16h 35m4.1 (10.2K)$2 · $0.00
The Prince + The Art of War (2 Unabridged Machiavellian Masterpieces)Niccolò Machiavelli7h 51m$1 · $0.00
Discourses on the First Decade of Titus LiviusNiccolò Machiavelli15h 3m4.2 (11.3K)$2 · $0.00
Matters of the HeartJacinta Nampijinpa Price9h 35m4.8 (359)$29 · $0.00
How to Test Negative for StupidJohn Kennedy8h 13m4.7 (9.7K)$28 · $0.00
Black AF HistoryMichael Harriot15h 43m4.7 (14.6K)$33 · $0.00
The Gulag Archipelago Volume 3Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn21h 56m4.7 (8.9K)$46 · $0.00
MotherlandJulia Ioffe17h 52m4.7 (2.5K)$40 · $0.00
HostageEli Sharabi5h 25m4.6 (10.8K)$24 · $0.00
Days of Love and Rage: A Story of RevolutionAnand Gopal22h 36m4.7 (584)$34 · $0.00
KrantikariSanjeev Sanyal11h 44m4.6 (1.3K)$16 · $0.00
Unbroken Bonds of BattleJohnny Joey Jones8h 31m4.6 (2.6K)$8 · $0.00
On Democracies and Death CultsDouglas Murray10h 38m4.6 (6.5K)$29 · $0.00
Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and BeyondJohn Lyons12h 37m4.6 (1.4K)$33 · $0.00
RiggedMollie Hemingway12h 48m4.6 (4.2K)$23 · $0.00
SledgehammerDavid Friedman8h 21m4.7 (589)$26 · $0.00
Citizenship in a Republic (Annotated)Theodore Roosevelt2h 44m4.6 (1.4K)$2 · $0.00
No EscapeNury Turkel9h 30m4.6 (809)$28 · $0.00
Always FaithfulThomas Schueman, Zainullah Zaki12h 12m4.6 (977)$29 · $0.00
UnthinkableJamie Raskin15h 8m4.5 (9.3K)$8 · $0.00
My Fourth Time, We DrownedSally Hayden13h 59m4.6 (2.9K)$23 · $0.00
A Revolution of Common SenseScott Jennings9h 29m4.6 (528)$29 · $0.00
Statement From the Dock at the Rivonia TrialNelson Mandela2h 18m4.6 (1.3K)$1 · $0.00
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