In this book, Athanasios Moulakis makes available for the first time in English the important essay Discorso di Logrogno, "How to Bring Order to Popular Government," by Renaissance thinker Francesco Guicciardini. In addition to his valuable and lucid translation of the essay, Moulakis provides an engaging analysis of this important work.

He shows that, far from representing a revival of ancient republicanism, the long maturation of Florentine constitutional thought - brought to fine expression by Guicciardini - points to a distinctly modern idea of the republican state. Republican Realism in Renaissance Florence is a unique and important book that will be of great value to historians and political theorists alike.