"Napoleon: A Life,’ by Andrew Roberts" Topic

"On July 22, 1789, a week after the storming of the Bastille in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote to his older brother, Joseph, that there was nothing much to worry about. "Calm will return. In a month." His timing was off, but perhaps he took the misjudgment to heart because he spent the rest of his life trying to bring glory and order to France by building a new sort of empire. By the time he was crowned emperor on Dec. 2, 1804, he could say, "I am the Revolution." It was, according to the historian Andrew Roberts's epically scaled new biography, "Napoleon: A Life," both the ultimate triumph of the self-made man, an outsider from Corsica who rose to the apex of French political life, and simultaneously a "defining moment of the Enlightenment," fixing the "best" of the French Revolution through his legal, educational and administrative reforms. Such broad contours get at what Napoleon meant by saying to his literary hero Goethe at a meeting in Erfurt, "Politics is fate."…"
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Amicalement
Armand

The great soldier-statesman

A review of Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

"The distinguished historian Andrew Roberts has written his greatest book to date and has made an important contribution to the vast Napoleonic literature. His Napoleon: A Life (whose British title is Napoleon the Great) is a monument of research and organization, adheres to the author's well-established high-stylistic standard, and reaches a new summit of thoroughness and balance in his treatment of probably the most gigantic personality in the history of the world (barring those widely regarded as partially divine).1 Every significant or interesting aspect of Napoleon's life is dealt with: the general, the administrator and reformer, the law-giver, the academician and intellectual, the promoter of science, the ardent womanizer and lover, the public relations genius, the politician, and the creator of an immense mystique whose power has survived the two centuries following his death. And Roberts examines all elements of Napoleon's administration, including its financial record and fiscal and social consequences, as well as Napoleon's intricate diplomatic history. At many points throughout the work, Roberts considers alternative steps Napoleon might have taken and makes apt historical comparisons…"
Full review here.

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Amicalement
Armand

TangoO1: I was not aware of this book, (how did I miss this!), and I appreciate your posting the above information! Thanks a lot, John Miller