I’ve had a passing interest in Napoleon since I was a young man, but only in the last handful of years has that interest developed into something more like an enthusiasm for learning about this charismatic leader, the French Revolution, and the various Napoleonic Wars.

Napoleon Bonaparte lived an adventure filled and full life, even having died young at age 52. He was at once a brilliant tactician (having only lost 7 out of the 60 battles he was in), a superb statesman (introducing legislation and policies that would shape France for generations to come), and occasionally a monster.

This book dives deep into his early years on Corsica, and tracks his meteoric rise through the ranks from a young Lieutenant to the Emperor of the Republic of France. It does a good job of providing a birds eye view of the major battles, and perhaps most importantly paints a vivid picture of the man - his habits, his likes and dislikes, and his demeanour. It talks about the card games he liked to play, the way he drank his coffee, his morning habits, and how long he slept. All of this helps paint a picture of the man.

I could easily read this again and probably absorb just as much as I did the first time around, and I just might. Terrific book. ( )

A near-peasant upstart from a small Mediterranean island transforms himself into the emperor of nearly all of Europe, using not much more than gall and genius. Many have the former, but the latter is in rare supply. In combination, in the 18th and 19th centuries, they reshaped the world. Andrew Roberts does a superb job of keeping the reader engaged in the political and social machinations of Napoleon Bonaparte's time, and does so in a way that consistently maintains more sympathy for the man than many biographies have done, even while exposing the man's moral and military failings. His military failings were comparatively few, and Roberts makes the jumble of countries, principalities, duchies, and cultures Napoleon conquered clearly defined. The book not only serves as an exemplary biography of the man at its center, but as a valuable primer in a historical period the waves of which still wash our political shores. It is a fine and valuable work. ( )

Roberts does an excellent job of squeezing Napolean's life into this one volume. He covers military, political, and personal aspects of NB's life. The biography is easy to read, well-referenced, and includes some information from a recently published massive collection of Napolean's letters. I don't have any major complaints, but...

There is no real political or psychological analysis, just reportage. That's fine, I suppose the reader can draw their own conclusions, and it reduces the size of the biography, but if a work is simplified in this way it seems less significant and reading it may seem like a less important use of your time.

The maps vary in quality and there should be at least a few more. The author is only fair in his ability to describe battles geographically. While reading this I bought the atlas of battles in the Napoleonic Wars in the West Point series, but I didn't care for it either.

I can't be sure, but the main use of the author's review of Napolean's letters seems to be the discovery that he was a micromanager and took his job as emperor seriously. This is mostly revealed in footnotes and gets a little tedious after the first several of these cataloging what odd thing or other Napolean was writing to some minor official about.

In discussing Napolean's postmortem findings, the author states that benign gastric ulcers used to sometimes become malignant before the invention of acid-arresting medication. This is some kind of garbled misunderstanding. (I won't explain Helicobacter pylori here or the difference between gastro-esophageal junction and gastric body carcinomas.) ( )

Took me forever to read this, but a terrific book, pro-Napoleon in bent and with a lovely eye for anecdote and detail. ( )

Virkilega vel skrifuð og rannsökuð ævisaga um Napóleon Bónaparte. Farið er vel yfir æfi hans frá uppvexti á Korsíku til andláts í útlegð á St. Helenu. Roberts greinir frá hernaðarkænsku hans, pólitík og lagabreytingum. Hann nýtir sér vel m.a. ótrúlegan fjölda bréfa sem Napóleon skrifaði en þau gátu numið tugum á einum degi. Starfsorka hans var ótrúleg en að lokum varð hroki hans honum að falli. Þetta er verðlaunuð ævisaga sem er vel þess virði að kynna sér hafi maður áhuga á keisaranum og hernaðinum sem skók Evrópu í kringum 1800. ( )