The Prince for the Twenty-First Century

How Machiavelli Would Explain Trump, Putin, China, and Today's World Order

What would Machiavelli say about Trump's America First? How would he judge Putin's wars in Ukraine? What would he make of Xi Jinping's China and the collapse of Venezuela under Maduro?

Five hundred years after The Prince, the fundamental questions about power remain unchanged: How is it seized? How is it held? What brings it down?

In this incisive work of political philosophy, Henry Bugalho—translator of Machiavelli and scholar of contemporary political movements—applies the Florentine's timeless framework to the defining power struggles of our era:

• Trump and the weaponization of political spectacle
• Putin and the fatal miscalculation in Ukraine
• Xi Jinping's China and a patience game Machiavelli never imagined
• Maduro's Venezuela and the capture of the state while the regime survives
• Iran and the limits of cruelty as statecraft
• Liberal democracies eroded from within by their own elected princes

More than mere application, The Prince for the 21st Century is an act of calibration: Where does Machiavelli still illuminate—and where does his lens distort? What endures across centuries, and what has been left behind?

A book for those who want to understand politics as it is—not as it should be.

About the Author: Henry Bugalho is a Brazilian philosopher, writer, and translator. Holder of a Master's degree in Rhetoric and Oratory, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, he has translated Machiavelli's The Prince, the works of Hesiod and Plato, among other classics. He has published numerous works on contemporary politics, with an emphasis on far-right populist movements.