As promised, here is the intro to my new book due out in March:

The King Whisperers: Power Behind the Throne from Rasputin to Rove.

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.

- Stephen Vincent Benet

In the summer and fall of 1503, Niccolo Machiavelli represented his beloved Florence in negotiations with one of the most ambitious and dangerous men in Europe at the time, Cesare Borgia, the son of the Pope.
Machiavelli was trying to determine whether it was in the interest of the Florentine republic to enter into an alliance with Borgia, ...