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Korean and Complex Chinese translations of Be Like the Fox
Coming soon - Simple Chinese, Hebrew, Turkish, Portuguese
Coming soon - Simple Chinese, Hebrew, Turkish, Portuguese
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Erica Benner's Be Like the Fox is shortlisted for the 2018 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography See more
Welcome to my website. I'm a writer and scholar who works on moral and political thought. I have held long-term or permanent posts at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Yale University.Here is my Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_Benner
My first book was on nationalism and national identity. Nationalism fascinated me from an early age, no doubt because I was born and grew up in Japan as an obvious gaijin (foreigner), and wanted to understand why some people cared more than I did about national differences. I still don't care much about them, but have come to appreciate why other people do.
Over the last decade or so I worked a lot on Machiavelli. My latest book, Be Like the Fox, is a biography of the good man. Unlike most scholars today - but like some readers nearer to his own time - I see Machiavelli as a lifelong republican who fought hard against tyranny and corruption. Since this made him a troublemaker in the eyes of princes and popes, he became an artist of cunning dissimulation who doesn't always 'say what I mean, or mean what I say' (as he wrote to a friend).
During lockdown in Berlin I started writing a new book on democracy. I'll write more about it here when it's further along. For now I'll just say that while it deals with serious matters like democracies in crisis, it's also quite funny. I think. So does my highly intelligent 93 year-old mother.
My first book was on nationalism and national identity. Nationalism fascinated me from an early age, no doubt because I was born and grew up in Japan as an obvious gaijin (foreigner), and wanted to understand why some people cared more than I did about national differences. I still don't care much about them, but have come to appreciate why other people do.
Over the last decade or so I worked a lot on Machiavelli. My latest book, Be Like the Fox, is a biography of the good man. Unlike most scholars today - but like some readers nearer to his own time - I see Machiavelli as a lifelong republican who fought hard against tyranny and corruption. Since this made him a troublemaker in the eyes of princes and popes, he became an artist of cunning dissimulation who doesn't always 'say what I mean, or mean what I say' (as he wrote to a friend).
During lockdown in Berlin I started writing a new book on democracy. I'll write more about it here when it's further along. For now I'll just say that while it deals with serious matters like democracies in crisis, it's also quite funny. I think. So does my highly intelligent 93 year-old mother.
'In this tightly composed narrative of Machiavelli’s life and works,
Erica Benner argues that The Prince is a work of secret subversion, using irony and beguilement to advance astaunchly republican message. . .A gripping portrait of a brilliant political thinker, who understood the dangers of authoritarianism and looked for ways to curb them even though independent speech had become impossible.'
— The New Yorker on Be Like the Fox
Erica Benner argues that The Prince is a work of secret subversion, using irony and beguilement to advance astaunchly republican message. . .A gripping portrait of a brilliant political thinker, who understood the dangers of authoritarianism and looked for ways to curb them even though independent speech had become impossible.'
— The New Yorker on Be Like the Fox
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'When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace.
Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions. And they, out of their human kindness, answer me.' |
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And for hours at a time I feel no boredom,
I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death.
I absorb myself into them completely.
Machiavelli, Letter to Vettori 10 December 1513
I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death.
I absorb myself into them completely.
Machiavelli, Letter to Vettori 10 December 1513