Niccolò Machiavelli 
The Prince [EPUB ebook] 

Politicians have the reputation of being power-hungry manipulators. What you might not know is that the image of the modern politician may actually have roots in the 500-year-old document called ’The Prince’ by Niccolò Machiavelli. ’The Prince’ is a political treatise describing the less-than-honorable but all-too-realistic methods politicians (still) use to secure their power.
Machiavelli wrote ’The Prince’ within two years after he was driven from office. A surviving letter indicates that the first title for it was “On Principalities.” The work was not published until 1532.