Here at the frontier, the leaves fall like rain. Although my neighbors are all barbarians, and you, you are a thousand miles away, there are still two cups at my table.


Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.

~ Wu-men ~


Saturday, April 09, 2016

Machiavelli's Reading List

Over at Modern Machiavelli, there was a post on what would be a good reading list for a present day Machiavelli. I've read most of them and concur.

The full post with brief descriptions of the books may be read here. The list in a nutshell is:

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
You Are The Message by Roger Ailes
The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene
The Definite Book of Body Language by Allan and Barbara Pease
Influence by Robert Cialdini
Games People Play by Eric Berne
Propaganda by Edward Bernays
The Prince by Nicolo Machiaveli
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
On War by Carl von Clausewitz
The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian
The Craft of Power by RGH Siu
Maxims and Reflections by Francesco Guicciardini
33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene
The 36 Strategies
The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
The 16 Laws of Success by Napoleon Hill
Antifragile by Nassim Taleb
Mastery by Robert Greene




5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd like to recommend Thomas Schelling's many books on strategy be added to this list.

Rick Matz said...

For example:

http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Conflict-Thomas-C-Schelling/dp/0674840313/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1460319650&sr=8-1&keywords=thomas+schelling

Anonymous said...

Also please include J. Bowyer Bell and Barton Whaley's seminal book on the topic, "Cheating and Deception." It's rather obscure but pretty good in my opinion.

Rick Matz said...

http://www.amazon.com/Cheating-Deception-J-Bowyer-Bell/dp/088738868X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460588767&sr=1-1&keywords=cheating+and+deception

Compass Architect said...

The Chinese Machiavelli: 3000 Years of Chinese Statecraft
http://www.amazon.com/The-Chinese-Machiavelli-Years-Statecraft/dp/0765805685

Han Fei Tzu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Fei)
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/saxon/servlet/SaxonServlet?source=xwomen/texts/hanfei.xml&style=xwomen/xsl/dynaxml.xsl&chunk.id=tpage&doc.view=tocc&doc.lang=bilingual

The First Two Chapters of Six Secret Teachings

Huang Shih-kung San-lueh (Three Strategies)

The Chinese text of Master of Ghost Valley.