An Unlikely Prince

The Life and Times of Machiavelli

By: Niccolo Capponi

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

In this compelling new biography, historian Niccol Capponi frees Machiavelli (1469-1527) from centuries of misinterpretation. Exploring the Renaissance city of Florence, where Machiavelli lived, Capponi reveals the man behind the legend. A complex portrait of Machiavelli emerges - at once a brilliantly skillful diplomat and a woefully inept liar; a sharp thinker and an impractical dreamer; a hard-nosed powerbroker and a risk-taking gambler; a calculating propagandist and an imprudent jokester.

Capponi’s intimate portrait of Machiavelli reveals his behavior as utterly un-Machiavellian, his vision of the world as limited by his very provincial outlook. In the end, Machiavelli was frustrated by his own political failures and utterly baffled by the success of his book The Prince.

©2010 Niccolo Capponi (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Worst. Narrator. EVER.

I couldn’t get past the prologue. This guy reads with the drone and unrealistic cadence of a news reporter, oddly dragging out the last word of every sentence. He sounds like a robot imitating a human. After 4 or 5 minutes I was so distracted by the ridiculous narration, I skipped to chapter one in the hopes that someone else would narrate the body of the book. But no. Deleted the book from my library and came straight here to save you from such a bad experience. Who thought this guy should be a narrator? Terrible. I’ll order a hard copy of the book and read it for myself. I had to give the story a rating to submit this review, but I have not read it.

Unbearable reading

Only got past the introduction. The exaggerated that's-one-a-spicy-meat-a-ball-eh "Italian" prosody was just too goddamned annoying to listen to.