The Book of the Courtier
Widely acknowledged as the sixteenth century's most significant handbook on leadership, The Book of the Courtieroffers an insider's view of court life and culture during the Renaissance. Set in 1507, when the author himself was an attache to the Duke of Urbino, the book consists of a series of fictional conversations between members of the Duke's retinue. All aspects of leadership come under discussion, but the primary focus rests upon the relationship between advisors and those whom they counsel. Ever-relevant subjects include the decision-making process, maintaining an ethical stance, and the best ways of interacting with authority figures. Frequently assigned in university courses on literature, history, and Renaissance studies, the Dover edition of this classic work will be the lowest-priced edition available.
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What Hacker News says
- Originally from the very readable Book of the Courtier
- I liked the Art of War in high school. Feel like it helped me a lot with stuff like negotiating salary in my early years.
Later -- The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione -- same topic as Art of War I'd say.
- Aristotle said that drama is more philosophical than history, but (it seems to me) sometimes history may be more philosophical than philosophy, so, with an obvious American bias
_The Federalist Era_ _The Machiavellian Moment_, J.G.A. Pocock _The History of the United States During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison_, Henry Adams _The Old Regime and the Revolution_ by de Tocqueville, also his history of 1848. _The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution_, Bernard Bailyn Polybius
Lionhearted recommends a book on Castiglione--Castiglione's own book of the courtier is well worth reading and should be easy to find.
- I don't know. There's nothing high status about being the only person on the dance floor for 3 songs in a row.
> High status people don't really suffer from looking silly, they define what looking silly is by being what they don't do.
I also don't know about this. Certain high status people are obsessively concerned with whether they look silly. They used to routinely fight to the death over it.
I've been reading the Book of the Courtier this week, and it's clear that even back in the 16th century high status people were very concerned about whether they looked silly, or even whether their dances looked silly.
- > I've been reading the Book of the Courtier this week, and it's clear that even back in the 16th century high status people were very concerned about whether they looked silly, or even whether their dances looked silly.
In the context of the situation the people worrying probably weren't the highest status person in the room though. In a room full of princes one of them is going to be feeling pressure because they are low status relative to their peers. That is what instincts key off, not absolute numbers of people that a body can't immediately detect.
- From THE BOOK OF THE COURTIER (1528 tr. 1901)
p.75 "And verily it seems quite contrary to reason and worthy to be wondered at, that ripe age, which in other matters is wont to make men's judgment more perfect with long experience, should in this matter so corrupt it that they do not perceive that if the world were always growing worse, and if fathers were generally better than children, we should long since have reached that last grade of badness beyond which it is impossible to grow worse. And yet we see that not only in our days but in bygone times this failing has always been peculiar to old age, which is clearly gathered from the works of many ancient authors, and especially of the comic writers, who better than the others set forth the image of human life."
