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Niccolo’s Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli is written by Maurizio Viroli. Maurizio Viroli, a native born Italian, received a PhD in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and a degree in Philosophy at the University of Bologna, Italy. He has written two other books, A Dialogue on Republican Values (2001), and Republicanism (1999). Of the three books, Niccolo’s Smile has been reviewed as the greatest of the three, and the most outstanding of novels about Macchiavelli. After reaserching what other books Maurizio Viroli wrote, I discovered that many people call Viroli ‘One of Italy’s finest writers on the History of Ideas.’ In Niccolo’s Smile, Maurizio Viroli aimed to recount the same stories that Roberto Ridolfi wrote, but to write them in a new way. Viroli tried to focus on aspects that were previously overlooked and wanted to revise accepted views of Machiavelli. Viroli mentions how fascinated he was by Machiavelli - by his political thinking and writing, but especially by the way in which he laughed about light and other people. Moreover, he wrote this book to try to understand the meaning of Machiavalli’s endless smile, a smile that emerged from his letters, his works, and from certain portraits of him.
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