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This book uses the structure of Machiavelli´s The Prince to show how governance has changed over the last 500 years. If Machiavelli focuses on power concentrated in the hands of the republic or principalities, The Oligarch looks at how states and companies today function as oligarchies. Rather than dealing with the form of government, it addresses the operations and networks of governance for both states and corporations as a single set of common processes. The author links politics, ecology and literature, by using the literary device of appropriation to raise awareness of ecology and the overreach of powerful people, offering both wielders and critics of power a common ground based on how people in power actually conduct themselves.

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Section 1: Types of Oligarchies

Chapter I: How Many Forms of Governance There Are and How They Operate

Chapter II: Concerning Oligarchies Transmitted by Tradition, Inheritance, or Law

Chapter III: Concerning Mixed Oligarchies

Chapter IV: Why the Religious Oligarchs of Iran, Subjugated by the US, Rebelled Against Reza Shah Pahlavi, Forcing his Abdication, and Why Such Was Not the Case in Ukraine

Section 2: Details of Acquisition and Management of Organizations

Chapter V: Concerning the Way to Govern Firms and States that Are Accustomed to Operate Under Their Own (By-)Laws

Chapter VI: Concerning New Oligarchies Acquired by Skill

Chapter VII: Concerning New Oligarchies Acquired Either by the Arms of Others or by Good Fortune

Chapter VIII: Concerning Those Who Have Risen to the Oligarchy by Wickedness

Section 3: Oligarchic Forms

Chapter IX: Concerning a Civil Oligarchy

Chapter X: Concerning the Ways That the Strength of Oligarchies Ought to Be Measured

Chapter XI: Concerning Ecclesiastical Oligarchies

Section 4: Managing Assets in Organizations

Chapter XII: How Many Kinds of Assets, Workers, and Soldiery There Are, and Concerning Consultants and Lobbyists

Chapter XIII: Concerning Auxiliaries or Foreign Troops and Assets, and One´s Own

Chapter XIV: That Which Concerns the Oligarch on the Subject of the Art of Finance

Section 5: Guidance on Oligarchic Comportment

Chapter XV: Concerning Things for Which All People, and Especially Oligarchs, Are Praised or Blamed

Chapter XVI: Concerning Liberality and Parsimony

Chapter XVII: Concerning Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether It Is Better to Be Loved Than Feared

Chapter XVIII: Concerning the Way in Which Oligarchs Should Keep Faith

Chapter XIX: That One Should Avoid Being Despised and Hated

Section 6: The Projects of Oligarchs

Chapter XX: Are Building Programs, Walls, Fortresses, and Other Projects to Which Oligarchs Often Resort Advantageous or Burdensome?

Section 7: Good Offices

Chapter XXI: How an Oligarch Should Conduct Himself in Order to Gain Renown

Chapter XXII: Concerning the Administrators of Oligarchy

Chapter XXIII: How Flatterers Should Be Avoided

Section 8: Risk Management and Marketplace Mentality

Chapter XXIV: Oligarchs Who Have Lost Control of Their Organizations and Networks

Chapter XXV: What Probability Can Effect in Human Affairs, and How to Manage It

Chapter XXVI: An Exhortation to Liberate Nations and Their Citizens from Marketplace Mentality

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James Sherry is the author of 12 books of criticism and poetry, most recently Oops! Environmental Poetics (2013) and Entangled Bank (2016). He is the editor of Roof Books, a literary press (roofbooks.com) in New York City, USA.

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