Andrew Roberts

Draws on the recent publication of Napoleon's thousands of letters to share new insights into his character, motivations, and relationships.

A Life

Napoleon

Misha

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Jeni Enjaian

It has been a while since I have read a history or biography. Since I was falling too far behind on my reading goal for the year I had to supplement with young adult fiction which is much easier and quicker to get through. I need to get back into the habit of reading this type of book regularly since that will aid in making the review process a bit easier.

I purchased this book back on Amazon's "Prime Day" for fairly cheap. The flyleaf description touted the recently released 30,000 documents containing never before seen personal correspondence from the famous and infamous dictator. Roberts, in the prologue also described the wealth of information now available to biographers that had not previously been available. With such a build up, I expected much more information or quotations to be revealed/published from those documents. While Roberts stated that he relied heavily on those documents in the writing of this book, I saw little evidence of it. Most of this book contained information that I learned years ago in a college class on the French Revolution and Napoleon. In fact, much of the book focused primarily on military history. (I understand that the life that Napoleon lived necessitates a significant amount devoted to military history. My point is that I expected a more well-rounded picture of Napoleon.)

This lack of follow through to his stated intention is the reason for my three star review. Had Roberts not made the release of these documents front and center, I would have rated this book higher. Robert's narrative flows well and avoids getting bogged down in petty details (of which there are many in military history) that lose many casual readers. His historiography appears sound. He did not however live up to his stated intention.

This is an excellent biography of Napoleon. I cannot compare it to others, however, because it is the only such biography that I have read.

I do recommend it with the above noted caveat.

Chris Wilcox

Mrigank

The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of The Storm of War—winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and the Grand Prix of the Fondation Napoleon Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times. Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century. An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.

Napoleon A Life

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