A Child's Machiavelli

Book excerpt: Beatrice is proud to present a new edition of A Child's Machiavelli: A Primer on Power by Claudia Hart. Originally published in 1995, A Child's Machiavelli reimagines Niccolò Machiavelli's political treatise The Prince as an instructional children's book. Hart simplifies the core ideas embedded within The Prince by utilizing a child-friendly vocabulary and narrative style that is both comical and unsettling. The artwork in A Child's Machiavelli, which Hart originally created as a series of oil paintings based on found images from Victorian-era and early 20th-century European picture book illustrations, has been transformed into stark black-and-white reproductions for this edition. The publication design has been simplified in comparison to previous editions, placing it closer to the look and feel of those books that inspired the original artwork. A Child's Machiavelli--much like The Prince before it--is arguably timeless in how easily it can be related to contemporary politics. On the eve of the 2020 USA presidential election, the book still manages to slyly and effortlessly incriminate those that would abuse their elected power for personal gain. Claudia Hart is an artist, writer, curator, and educator who lives and works in New York and Chicago. Her interdisciplinary practice engages with simulation technologies to explore issues of identity, the body, politics, and nature in an increasingly digitized post-photographic world.