First english edition with Privilege Leaf page dated January 7th 1646. Has been rebound, brown leather boards with ridged spine, 1478 pages, measures roughly 8.5' wide, 12.75" tall and 3.5" deep. " The American statesman and political thinker John Adams wrote his last work of political theory, the Discourses on Davila, as an extended commentary on Davila's history of the French civil wars, following the example of Machiavelli's Discorsi on Livy's history of Rome."