re: #18 William Lewis

I’m…fascinated…by Niccolo Macchiavelli. Firenze is this petri dish of political experimentation—gangster monarchy, Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities, and the failed republic all happen in generation, a microcosm of European ferment—and that he’s a philosopher that both advocates for a republic to the point he gets tortured by the Medicis, and writes a manual for princes (a standardized text you made for a patron) that actually addresses the reality of absolute control just makes me wonder about the dude.