Fortune Is A River

Opening a window on Renaissance Florence and two of its geniuses, the author traces the little-known friendship between da Vinci and Machiavelli and their joint effort to fulfill da Vinci's extravagant dream of turning Florence into a seaport. 30,000 first printing.

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 LeonardoAthen military architect and engineer to warlord Cesare BorgiaAin 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 projectsAincluding the ill-conceived scheme to divert the ArnoAwere 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.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A curious work based on speculation and conjecture more than documents, yet interesting in its own way. Although historians have long speculated that Leonardo da Vinci and Niccol Machiavelli knew each other and perhaps collaborated on a fantastic project to transform Florence into a seaport by diverting the Arno River, little evidence survives to reconstruct the story. Masters (Government/Dartmouth) makes a valiant attempt to do so, and that lack of documentation allows him to weave a fanciful tale. With the discovery of the ``New World'' shifting the economic focus of Europe to the Atlantic and away from the Italian city-states, Florence was desperate to reassert its dominance in European trade. On a smaller scale, the ``Athens of Italy'' was in a perpetual state of war with its neighboring city-states, especially Milan, Venice, Pisa, Lucca, and the papacy. Focusing more on Leonardo's capacities as a brilliant military technician rather than as an artist and Machiavelli's responsibilities as administrator and diplomat for Florence rather than his role as political theorist, Masters recounts their failed attempt to divert the Arno by building a series of canals that would transform Florence into a seaport, allowing the city to engage in the trans-Atlantic trade. At the same time, the diversion of the Arno would deprive the city of Pisa of a necessary water supply, thereby forcing its defeat and Florence's domination of Tuscany. As might be expected from the lack of evidence, only a small part of this short book is devoted to the actual project; most of the narrative is taken up with introducing Leonardo's genius in constructing military defense systems and urban planning while uncovering Machiavelli's career as Florentine diplomat and administrator. Although readers might be frustrated at the slight reconstruction of the project, they will be rewarded with a behind-the-scenes look at Renaissance society: its spying, treachery, machinations, striving for power and patrons, and a more human portrait of both protagonists. Readers might recall Machiavelli's famous aphorism, ``Fortune is a woman that sometimes has to be taken by force before she has a chance to resist''; here they will find one of the more curious collaborations in history to take Fortune. (illustrations) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.