Convinced that a good political leader or "prince new" would have to engage in acts of cruelty and bad faith, Machiavelli faces a predicament: how to justify this evil to prospective leaders themselves and to people at large. This study offers an exploration of how he penetrated this difficulty. Telling the story of Machiavelli's childhood and period of personal crisis following his imprisonment, the author turns to "The Prince", and uses the facts of biography to illuminate how Machiavelli's ideas gathered power and came together to form a unified vision of humankind and the world.