My take is that the advice in those books is great advice for those seeking to gain and hold power in organizations. All else being equal, you should want the person running your organization to have mastered those ideas and be able to apply them productively for your organization.
That said, having an organization full of people who want to gain and hold power is a very, very bad thing. While you want the people at the top to do so, you don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry with a big ego doing so. So you are going to see an anti-pattern where a bunch of people who have no business trying to play Machiavellian games, attempt to do so. And part of the the reason why they should not do so is that they are not suited by temperament or competence.
