Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life
by Alan Schom
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Description
"Schom's one-volume life of Napoleon includes all facets of Napoleon's incredible career, from his childhood in Corsica to his death in exile on the island of St. Helena. It follows his many military campaigns and describes the great battles he won and lost from northern Italy to Egypt, Spain, Prussia, Austria, Poland, and Russia, to his final defeat at Waterloo. It illuminates his extensive political and structural reorganization of the French government; explores his relationships with his show more wives - the legendary Josephine and her replacement, Marie-Louise - and some of his mistresses; and chronicles his feuds with his tempestuous family and both loyal and mutinous officials. Key aides, ministers, generals, and naval commanders - from Talleyrand and Police Minister Fouche to Marshals Ney, Davout, and Lannes, Admiral Villeneuve, and many more - are fully portrayed and given their due. International rivalries and diplomatic negotiations are also thoroughly covered, and Napoleon's many opponents and enemies - including Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, Emperor Franz I of Austria, Czar Alexander I of Russia, and Field Marshals Kutuzov, Blucher, and the Duke of Wellington - are brought vividly to life." "There are intriguing fresh insights here, too; among them an examination of Napoleon's little-known friendship with a leading mathematician and savant, and of the cause of his death on St. Helena. Unique in Napoleonic literature, even that by French authors, is Schom's candor about Napoleon's character flaws. Nor does he gloss over the awful misery and destruction that Napoleon's endless, often needless wars of conquest wreaked on the peoples of Europe, his indifference to the medical needs of his own soldiers, or the surprisingly frequent examples of his poor planning and intelligence gathering."--Jacket. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Easy, if depressing, read. You might hope for something larger than life, but instead you see an almost garden-variety tale of psychopathy, megalomania and cronyism -- tiresomely, fearsomely reminiscent of Hitler. The writing and scholarship seem very sound, the pace brisk, and Schom makes no secret of his feelings about Napoleon and many of his hangers-on. A very well-written book, laying bare the essential meanness of his subject.
3076 Napoleon Bonaparte, by Alan Schom (read 15 May 1998) This is the first Napoleon biography I read since August of 1957 when I read John Holland Rose's two volume work. Schom is very anti-Napoleon, and the book leads me to conclude that Napoleon was an evil and despicable man. Why does he have an aura of glory about him? I believe it is because Frenchmen often are proud of his victories. This book is solidly researched--the huge bibliography is made up mostly of French books. Napoleon's life is a fantastic one, and much of it is absorbedly interesting. The book has nearly 800 pages of text, and I must admit some of the battle accounts are not super-interesting. But all other parts I found really absorbing reading.
I used to love Napoleon, but the documentation of how he treated his injured soldiers has really tarnished his image for me.
A wonderful biography. Highly recommended.
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Author Information
9 Works 1,249 Members
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1997
- People/Characters
- Napoleon Bonaparte; Empress Josephine; Louis Alexandre Berthier
- Important places
- Corsica, France; Paris, France; Austerlitz, Austrian Empire (modern day Slavkov u Brna); Waterloo, Walloon Brabant, Belgium; St Helena; Elba, Tuscany, Italy (show all 7); Slavkov u Brna, South Moravia, Czech Republic
- Important events
- Napoleonic Wars (1803 | 1815); Peninsular War (1807 | 1814); Battle of Waterloo (1815-06-18)
- Epigraph
- Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his bare legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time were masters of their fates.
- Sh... (show all)akespeare, Julius Caesar
... I may truly say, my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my [life's] pilgrimage - Francis Bacon
Napoleon's empire, with all its faults, and all its glories, fell and flushed away like snow at Easter until nothing remained by His Majesty's ship Bellerophon which awaited its suppliant refugees. - Sir Winston Churchill - Dedication
- To the memory of Stepfan Zweig (1881-1942), who cherished and worked for a vision of Europe far different from that of Napoleon.
And to Emile Zola (1840-1902), who gave her life to the struggle for historical truth. - First words
- On December 17, 1778, thirty-two-year-old Carlo Maria (or Charles, as he now called himself) Buonaparte boarded a coastal vessel in the Corsican port of Ajaccio.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Finally, in perhaps one of the most ironic twists of fate, a direct result of Napoleon's having destroyed the hundreds of Germanic states belonging to the Holy Roman Empire, and reunifying them along wih Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and the rest, was the facilitation and stimulations of German nationalism and unification under Bismark's guiding hand later in the century, leading to Prussia's successful invasion and occupation of France.
- Original language
- English US
Classifications
- Genres
- History, Biography & Memoir, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 944.05092 — History & geography History of Europe France and Monaco France First empire 1804-1815
- LCC
- DC203 .S36 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania France – Andorra – Monaco History of France Modern, 1515- Revolutionary and Napoleonic period, 1789-1815
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 650
- Popularity
- 44,283
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.46)
- Languages
- English, Hungarian
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 4
