ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Burton Pike for his encouragement, support, and knowledgeable editorial advice throughout this project. I am also grateful to Albert Russell Ascoli for his encouragement: I benefited from both his advice and his extensive publications over the years on Machiavelli and the Italian Renaissance. I am also grateful to Daniel Javitch for his editorial recommendations, to Nelson Moe, and to Beth Hadas for her insights into Machiavelli’s comic prose. I am especially thankful to Judy Sternlight, my editor at Modern Library, for her tireless support and helpful knowledge of the Renaissance, to Vincent La Scala, and to Jessica Wainwright.

I am particularly grateful to Columbia University’s libraries and the help of Karen Green, the Librarian of Ancient and Medieval History and Religion. Columbia’s substantial Italian Renaissance collection was of great help for the annotation and interpretation of the texts.

—Peter Constantine