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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. 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 so much more than I did about national differences. I still don't care much about them, but have come to appreciate why other people do.
For the last decade or so I've 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).
For the last decade or so I've 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).
'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 a
staunchly 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 a
staunchly 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