The Prince

Il Principe (The Prince) is a political treatise by the Florentine public servant and political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli. Originally called De Principatibus (About Principalities), it was written in 1513, but not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. The treatise is not actually representative of the work published during his lifetime, but it is certainly the most remembered, and the one responsible for bringing "Machiavellian" into wide usage as a pejorative term.