Andrew Roberts (1) (1963–)

This is the third Napoleon biography I've read and it is probably my favorite. I read this book in audiobook format, narrated by Stephen Thorne.

Roberts draws heavily on Napoleon's thousands of letters to inform his narrative. The book is very well structured, with chapters focused on many of the most famous locations and battles of Napoleon's life such as: Corsica, Revolution, Italy, Peace, Egypt, Acre and Brumaire.

Overall, the book is very positive on Napoleon and his achievements. That show more overall positive assessment is balanced with criticism in several cases. For example, Roberts points out key reasons for the failures in the 1814-1815 campaigns. Napoleon's failures in Spain also come up for criticism. In addition, Roberts argues that Napoleon never really understood naval power or strategy and therefore, never made meaningful progress in stopping the Royal Navy. Yet, despite these criticisms, Roberts makes a strong case for Napoleon's genius as a military leader, civil leader and more.

The final chapter of the book was particularly magnificent and sweeping on summing up Napoleon. I tend to agree with the view that Napoleon may be considered the last of the 18th-century Enlighten Despots. show less

This is a detailed history of the wartime relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill, and their respective military chiefs, Marshall and Brooke. Andrew Roberts draws heavily on private diaries and correspondence, using those voices to reconstruct the ongoing exchanges between the political and military leadership of Britain and the United States.

I experienced this as an audiobook, which made the material surprisingly vivid. Hearing the arguments unfold almost in dialogue gives a real sense show more of the push and pull between the four men across the war years. Early on the discussions feel grounded in strategic necessity, but as the war progresses the tone often shifts, becoming more political, more personal, and occasionally more protective of national pride.

The narration helps with this. The performances of the different voices are handled well, which gives the conversations a sense of personality rather than leaving them as distant archival quotations. Roberts also allows room for skepticism, both in the way the men challenge each other and in the moments where he steps back to place their arguments in a broader historical perspective. That distance gives the book a reassuring sense of academic care.

At the same time, it is a dense listen. The structure sits somewhere between a traditional academic account and something closer to an audio docu-drama built from historical sources. At points that combination works beautifully, but at others it becomes quite dry, and it was easy to lose focus as the long sequence of meetings, decisions, and disagreements accumulated.

It was only toward the latter part of the book that I felt I had fully grasped the scale of the cast and the flow of events. Because of that, it may land best for readers who already have a strong familiarity with the chronology of the Second World War and the campaigns being discussed.

I am glad I spent the time with it, but it is a very long and demanding work, and not the most accessible entry point into the subject. show less

There’s no lack of books about World War II, but Andrew Roberts’s readable, relatively concise, generally disinterested overview of the entire war is a valuable contribution to the field.

At 600 pages, this is of course not a short book, but there is simply no way to do justice to the now almost-unimaginable breadth and depth of WWII in a truly compact form. There were too many fronts, too many battles, too many causes and effects, too many acts of heroism and sacrifice, too many show more blunders that may have turned the tide of the war . . . .

Roberts is particularly strong in balancing coverage of the western and eastern fronts. It’s inevitable that historians of the war find writing about ‘their end’ of Europe more congenial; Roberts, an Englishman, does not shortchange his coverage of the western front and Africa, but he shines in bringing out the enormity of the war in Russia – something it’s easy for those of us in the west to overlook.

Another strength is the close coverage and analysis of how Hitler and his generals interacted and made decisions. If Roberts can be said to have a thesis or ‘angle’ on the war, it is that Hitler lost it because of his ideological blinders.

I also appreciated Roberts's willingness to discuss dispassionately the allied bombings of Germany, and the US atomic bombs dropped on Japan. I happen to agree with his conclusions on these acts' moral justification, but even those who disagree should be able to appreciate Roberts's efforts to portray the cultural and moral context of the desperate times in which they were carried out.

So does Roberts cut any corners in keeping his account to such a reasonable length? Those interested primarily in the war in the Pacific may find The Storm of War lacking. The chapters on both the Japanese conquests and the US/allied reconquests are brief, and go into detail only sporadically.

On the whole, however, this is a well-written, generally excellent account of the 20th century’s signature event. It would make a superb university text, and is to be recommended to anyone looking for a ‘big picture’ account of the war. show less

The Great Man theory of history has been out of favor for a long time, but if there was ever a case that proved the rule, it would be Napoleon. Born to minor nobility in Corsica, an insignificant and backwards island in the Mediterranean caught between French and Italian influences, Napoleon would rise through the ranks of the French Republican Army through ambition and immense military talent to Emperor of France, and then conqueror of most of Europe. Napoleon moved from triumph to triumph, show more until the disastrous invasion of Russia, the subsequent harrowing 1814 defensive campaign, and his final throw of the dice at Waterloo. In that interval, he redrew the map of Europe, wrote a new code of law and rational administration that swept away the last vestiges of feudalism, and laid the basis for modernity. Without Napoleon, the world would look very different.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David.

As Roberts lays out in the introduction, the sheer volume of work about Napoleon makes scholarship difficult. He estimates that one book about Napoleon's life has been published per day since Napoleon's death. In English history, Napoleon was the great enemy, the "Corsican Ogre", while for the French he was the greatest national hero since Joan of Arc. Many cotemporaneous memoirs by people close to Napoleon were ghostwritten and self-serving collections of lies. On the fortunate side, Napoleon was an inveterate letter writer, drafting between 5 and 10 letters a day, both administrative and personal, and all of those letters have recently been collected and published by the French archives. Napoleon frequently exaggerated in his letters, particularly estimate his successes on the day of a battle, but they are the truest and most accurate picture of the man.

Some of the most fascinating parts of the book concern Napoleon the man, where Roberts describes the overwrought essays of a youth trying to make sense of the French Revolution and his own place in a rapidly changing world, and an exiled and dying Napoleon on St. Helena. While supremely self-assured, Napoleon was a man of good humor, passion, immense energy and attention to detail, and real charisma, a far cry from the megalomaniac that he is often portrayed as. A second area that I found fascinating was Napoleon in Egypt, where he flirted with converting to Islam and leading an Arab army through Persia to British India.

Napoleon the general and the emperor come through less well, simply because of the scale of both subjects. With so many battles, it is hard to give them sufficient detail. Roberts captures the genius of Napoleon's corps systems and 'advantage of the central position', where he used the operational agility of his armies to combine and attack his enemies individually before he could respond, but beyond that, the battles are often bloody messes. Administration is perhaps too complex of a subject for a biography to cover in detail.

While a great man, Napoleon's primary perspective as a soldier proved his undoing. The ongoing war with England over Napoleon's Continental System of economic blockade wore away at the financial foundations of his empire. While he reached his zenith with the Treaty of Tilsit, which bound essentially all European powers but Portugal and Sicily to his cause, Napoleon was unable to sustain a peaceful alliance. Pursuit of victory through decisive battle proved elusive in Russia and Spain, and both the Prussians and the Austrians kept returning from their defeats, having learned painful lessons about victory.

Worse, Napoleon proved unable to cultivate human talent. None of his Marshals matched his own strategic brilliance. As his old friends died in battle, no one replaced them, and lack of good advice lead to overconfidence driven disasters in Spain and Russia. Foreign minister Talleyrand betrayed him in complex intrigues. His brothers, who he placed on thrones across Europe, never achieved more than mediocrity. Marshals Bernadotte and Murat both were given thrones by Napoleon, and both joined the 6th Coalition against him.

If I'm going to blow bookrace 2024 in April, no better way to do it than with a 1000 page biography. show less