""Connell provides by far the best historical introduction to a student text of The Prince "that I have ever seen. It is concise, clear, and remarkably straight-forward given the complexity of the issues it treats, including not only the precise context of the work's composition, but also some very helpful description of its reception. As a whole, in my view, this edition of The Prince "is the very best available in English, and I look forward to using it in my classes."

Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian philosopher and writer, and is considered one of the founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat and civil servant in the Florentine Republic in the sixteenth century, until arrested for conspiracy in 1513 after which he gave his time to writing.

Thomas G. Bergin - 1904 - 1987 - was an American scholar of Italian literature. He was an authority on writers including Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, and Giovanni Verga. His translated works such as Dante's Divine Comedy and Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince.