Quote:
Originally Posted by rantaid
for machiavellian the prince will be hard if you don't know the cultural or political situation of ... where is it? venice?
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Florence, actually. However, when I read it as a teen, I didn't have any great difficulty, there are a fair number of anecdotes, but the exact locations and names are not really relevant to the central thrust of the book (how to be a "good" prince). Reading the Wikipedia page on Italy's renaissance history, along with a cursory knowledge of Greek/Roman history should suffice, if you get a decent edition, most of the background information you would need would be in the introduction.
It's a bit like "The Art of War" in that respect. You don't need to know anything about Ancient China to be able to read Sun Tzu.