Reviews

Masters (government, Dartmouth Coll.; Beyond Relativism, LJ 9/15/93) examines Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli's cooperative efforts on behalf of the Florentine government in the early 1500s. Their assignment was to make the Arno River navigable from Florence to the Ligurian Sea for military and economic purposes. Masters reveals the reasons for the project's failure and shows the politics and intrigue of the time. Other major events of Leonardo's and Machiavelli's lives also figure in the narrative, in addition to interesting highlights of the lives of other prominent people and events. One example is his treatment of Amerigo Vespucci and the impact of his New World explorations on Florence. The scope of this interesting book makes it suitable for academic libraries. This volume bears comparison to R.W.B. Lewis's The City of Florence (Farrar, 1995).‘Norman Malwitz, Queens Borough, Jamaica, NY

Providing a remarkable window on the birth of the modern age, this meticulous study examines the little-known collaboration of Leonardo da Vinci and Niccol• Machiavelli. The two worked together in Florence between 1503 and 1506, where Machiavelli, the Florentine republic's second chancellor, enlisted LeonardoÄthen military architect and engineer to warlord Cesare BorgiaÄin a grandiose scheme to redirect the Arno River's course and make Florence a seaport. Machiavelli's strategic goal was to deprive Florence's bitter rival Pisa of water from the Arno, which flowed through that city. Beyond this, Leonardo envisioned a transformation of the Arno valley into an irrigated flood-control system that would generate wealth and security for Tuscany. Leonardo and Machiavelli also collaborated on the renovation of a fortress and other military projects, yet most of their joint projectsÄincluding the ill-conceived scheme to divert the ArnoÄwere failures. Nevertheless, through parallel biographies of his two famed protagonists, Masters, a Dartmouth professor of government, presents architect-inventor Leonardo as a visionary who sought a rational society based on science, while Machiavelli is defended here for his realistic worldview that stressed the inevitability of selfishness and conflict. This surprising dual portrait is beautifully illustrated with Leonardo's architectural and engineering drawings, urban-planning sketches and maps. (June)