Go to any public library and you’ll find dozens of books on leadership. Google “leadership in the workplace,” and up pop a multitude of sites. Observe leaders in action, from your supervisor to the president of the United States, and you can draw a myriad of lessons, positive and negative, from their management styles. If…

Commentary In the introduction to their translation of Machiavelli’s “Discourses on Livy,” Harvey Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov make a profound observation about Machiavelli’s political wisdom. “He tries to show,” they write, “that to understand political situations correctly, one must not listen to the intent of the words people use but rather look at the necessities they…