Machiavelli on Modern Leadership by Michael A. Ledeen is one of the most entertaining and instructive books I've read. It's one that I am going to keep at hand because I am sure to be going back to it time and again. It's also the perfect book to buy for your friends-and your enemies. Ledeen serves up Machiavelli's thoughts on the makings of a leader in easily digestible morsels, garnished with wonderful (good and bad) examples from the modern world of politics, government, military life, business, sports, religion. He has so much fun at this game that you inevitably start playing along with him, applying Machiavelli's rules to all the "bosses" you've ever known in your own life. With this book in hand you can also gain a new perspective on all the political figures you have learned to love and hate. Many world figures have already been dispassionately dissected for you by Ledeen, but you will find yourself looking around for others on whom Machiavelli would have conferred his seal of approval or disapproval.

Looking back over my own life, I found many classic Machiavellian examples, especially of the "bad" prince, in that terrible Communist world I left behind in 1978. Machiavelli tells us that, because men are more disposed toward evil than toward good, the supreme leaders are bloody minded; that is exactly how Nikita Khrushchev, one of my "supreme bosses" from my other life, looked to me, both when he was sober and when he was drunk. The Machiavellian man uses change and flexibility to stay on top, but the Soviet bloc leaders I knew were increasingly dogmatic and inflexible, culminating with Leonid Brezhnev, who acted like a mechanical puppet (as does Boris Yeltsin today). Or take another of Ledeen's points, in which Machiavelli recommends avoiding the mistake of believing that all men are the same, no matter where they may live. When given a private tour of Macy's department store in New York, my former Romanian boss, Nicolae Ceausescu, believed the displays had been specially set up for him, because that was what he would have done to impress a foreign visitor to his Communist Romania. Today, when Yeltsin appointed the bloody KGB general Sergey Stepashin as prime minister of Russia, I pondered the fact that in the last four centuries all Russian/Soviet tsars have turned to their political police to defend their thrones. When I looked into Ledeen's book to see if Machiavelli also had an answer for that, there it was: "Machiavelli very badly wants to believe that a great leader can almost always be confident about his ability to win, provided that he has studied history carefully."

During the 20 years that Michael Ledeen has been my friend, we have often worked together to fight the evils of Soviet Communism-and today's crypto-Communism-by using Machiavelli's weapons, and I have always been sure he would some day write the ultimate contemporary book on Machiavelli. Ledeen has so admired this eminent mind of the Italian Renaissance that he has himself become the perfect American Machiavelli.

Ion Mihai Pacepa (former adviser to Ceausescu and acting chief of his espionage service)

Originally, I bought this book as a gift for my girlfriend, because she is a big fan of philosophy. I wasn't expecting much, but thought it might be a fun read.
Our first impression of Mr. Ledeen was that he was way out there. He has very strong opinions of how the world works. He loves Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for instance. LOVES them. But after reading the book through, and then reading the original Machiavelli's "the prince," we determined that Michael Ledeen knew exactly what he was talking about!
We also decided to learn more about Michael Ledeen, so we went online. We went to a web site about him and learned that the man has a double Phd in Philosophy and history respectively. We found his e-mail address and send him a note, expressing our enjoyment of his book. He promptly replied BACK to us and explained his views on the George W. Bush presidency.
This book is fun, interesting, true to Machilavelli completely, and Mr. Ledeen makes a good comparison of the modern time with the time in which Machiavelli lived.

This book is not just for leaders, but anyone living in a democracy, simply because you get to vote for your leaders. This book gives one a whole new outlook on what a good leader should be like - not kind and caring as Greek Gods and kings of lore and old history were, but tough and pragmatic.
Numerous examples of this are given throughout the book, noting modern leaders from Winston Churchill to Pope John Paul II.
I liked the author's easy-to-read style as well, and the book is itself so encouraging that by the end of the first few chapters I was itching to read The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, and dying to play a game of bridge (read the book - you'll find out).

I should have known when I unwrapped is and saw the cartoonishly bad block lettering on the cover of this poorly written piece of Reaganesque agitprop. Hell, I should have known by the ham-fistedly longwinded title. But no. Instead of a careful, thoughtful discussion of Tocqueville, what you have here is a gussied up religious pamphlet. Bah humbug.

A.M. Ledeen's A.Tocqueville 's analyses of American spirit - relevant today?
The original "Democracy in America" is a well known university source of reference even now .In 1826 a French nobleman A.de Tocqueville devoted himself to study the American ideas concerning life under American Democracy started 200 years ago by the Pilgrims. He found the American character did not fundamentaly change, and the success of America is a direct result of its principles, which remain stable even when circumstances change. Ledeen 's analyses of them in today's conditions ( he describes the important characteristics and ideals ) as alive and well. The dynamic mindset for continuous improvement is more then materialism. Initiative is a permanent state of mind, esteem of personal liberty results in individualism and deep religious conviction gives a base for morality in dealing with the neighbour.
Equality is taken for granted in spite of status or wealth. This is true in the west as well as the east where the original settlers started. Northern neighbour Canada, is different, regimented and respectful of old world systems even though the nature and climate are similar. Americans created something new an free, left behind old habits and goals. Having lived in Europe and Latin America it impressed me as liberated from burdens of superficial formality .
He detects that Americans drive for a change. Every generation adopts new discoveries, destroys the old system and obstacles ruthlesly, expecting their sons to do better then the fathers.However they do respect the basic principles. There has been a confirmation by many that America can stay good even if there are many risks.

Tocqueville's insights into the American worldview and its application by the wide public led him to forecasts and warnings about the future expressed in detail by Ledeen. The future developments will bridge over fads like American feminism, Africanism and other trends ,as well as views of "intellectuals" who are considering themselves culturally superior and try to influence the political elite . They are for controls of centralized state and, as one of the powers of the expanded state they advance, removal of religious discourse from public forum. Tocqueville found and the recent polls quted by Ledeen still confirm it, that that the overwhelming majority of Americans do not agree with the anti-religious intellectuals and judges. The advice is: religion is a guarantee of freedom, as his native France has tested by trying to supress it.
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Ben Benda
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Many people in America have not read Alexis de Tocqueville's brilliant analysis of the American character, as he experienced on his trip to the United States in 1826. That's too bad, because his work brilliantly defines what is different about American society from any other one on Earth. As an aristocratic Frenchman, perhaps it was easier for him to see us as we are, by seeing how different we are from Europeans, Canadians, and Mexicans.

The concept of the book is to summarize de Tocqueville, and then to test his observations against what has happened since. I have not seen that done before, and looked forward to seeing the results.

When Michael Ledeen is describing de Tocqueville, or political thinking of that time, the book is superb. If the book had stopped there, it would have been a five star book. So if you want to read it for that background, you will be well rewarded. Alternatively, you can read de Tocqueville directly. I would prefer the original, but either would serve.

In his contemporary commentary on America, Mr. Ledeen is basically giving us a political sociology analysis. For such work, it is helpful to have facts that look from various perspectives and dimensions. The first problem with this book is that Mr. Ledeen prefers to give just one anecdote or one fact, and build his observations from that. That approach works well for stimulating debate, but falls short of being convincing about our unique character. I found this approach very suspect.

Second, Mr. Ledeen prefers to always come at the problem from the perspective of being paranoid about losing our ideal character. I think his point of view is a valid one, but there are others. For example, one can also talk optimistically about how we routinely avoid certain traps (like having the best people decide to become politicians, or failing to use private institutions to serve important social needs). Those other perspectives are missing. The result is a book that seems like an anti-Democrat (as in the political party) rant in many places.

The third problem is that the book seems to have been weakly researched. Facts and details seem just a little out of focus, as though drawn from long-remembered impressions, rather than real knowledge or research.

For example, I rarely see Jack Welch's (the famous CEO of General Electric) name misspelled in any publication or book. But in this book, he was "Welsh" all the way through. Now, I believe Mr. Welch is an Irishman by background, so I don't think it's an accurate description of his familial history, either.

Then, the book goes on to describe his Mr. Welch's pronouncements of 1980 as creative destruction. The ideas that Mr. Welch advocated in that year were well established and broadly in application throughout American business when he pursued them. He primarily was advocating that the company stay in businesses in which it could be the leader or have the second place in market share. He solved the company's deficiencies by simply selling the lower market share operations, not by destroying them. For example, Utah International (a mining operation) was sold within months of his taking the helm. It was only later that Mr. Welch began to downsize the remaining General Electric operations to get rid of excess layers of bureaucatic fat.

The ideas Mr. Welch advocated later in his career were actually more important to General Electric's success, such as freeing General Electric Capital to be very entrepreneurial, focusing on leadership training, and implementing Six Sigma. So at best, Mr. Welch is misdescribed due to misfocus in Mr. Ledeen's example. At worst, Mr. Ledeen simply doesn't seem to grasp the example. There are several other sections of the book that display these kinds of fundamental flaws about contemporary observations.

As a result, I have to grade the analysis of current society somewhere in the two to three star range, creating an average of three and a half or four stars for the whole book.

After you finish reading this book, test its thesis by thinking about the evolution of American business. De Tocqueville did not have too much to say about that institution. Mr. Ledeen has somewhat more to say, suggesting it is an inheritor of the free association tendency of Americans. But I wonder if it is not something more. Is it not the case that business is replacing many of the other institutions in its effectiveness and broader social focus? Now that theme would make an interesting book.

Guard your liberty jealously, from all who threat it . . . including a greedy or thoughtless majority, sloppy thinking, or corrupt leaders. Trust must be earned.