Napoleon: A Biography

This is the book to grab if you want to know all the important things about Napoleon's life in one book without having to worry about becoming bogged down with too much information. You will not be a Napoleonic expert after reading the book but you will have learned about all the significant events in Napoleon's life to be able to speak intelligently about them on a general level. This book should be enough for those who have a casual interest in Napoleon, but should also serve as a great starting point for those who want to learn more. For instance, the campaign in Russia is given good coverage in the book but left me yearning for more so one of my next purchases will be a book that deals specifically with the Russian campaign. Fortunately, there are great books out there for nearly every siginificant battle and event that Napoleon was in so this book is a great primer for those. Thanks to this book I've now picked out several other books to read on Napoleon, Nelson, Louis Davout and more. One of the great things about the book is how easy it is to read. McLynn writes straightforwardly but interestingly. The pages fly by. McLynn does use a lot of words that you don't see every day so keep a dictionary handy. Words like "tatterdemalion" were certainly new to me, but its nice to learn some new vocabulary. McLynn does engage in a fair amount of speculation about some of the events in Napoleon's life and of Napoleon's motives. Most of the theories advanced, such as McLynn's belief that Napoleon was probably poisoned instead of dying of the officially given reason of stomach cancer, are not outrageous because they have supporting facts. More troubling for some, though not me, may be the psychoanalysis that McLynn engages in. McLynn really tries to get at some of the psychological bases for some of Napoleon's actions and while that may be an impossible task the book does not suffer for it. You can agree or disagree but again, the explanations are not outlandish. The book is a well-balanced treatment of Napoleon overall. It is not hagiographic as the author makes it clear that he does not view Napoloen as the greatest military leader ever. McLynn acknowledges that Napoleon was largely untouchable from 1796-1805, working military magic at times, but also sets out the repeated mistakes Napoleon made, such as failure to account for the weather in battle, that meant fewer victories after 1805. McLynn makes judgments on Napoleon but all of them seem fair, even if one disagrees with some of them. All in all the facts are laid out clearly so you can make up your own mind. The book does a great job of trying to cover all the significant events and chapters in Napoleon's life. The book covers all the important military campaigns, including the reasons for going to war, but also provides excellent coverage of Napoleon's youth in Corsica, his marriages and affairs, his time on St. Helena, his economic policies and political and diplomatic strategies. Mo

McLynn's biography of Napoleon has everything you could ask for in a biography. It is a lucidly written book that is at once entertaining and informing. It is a balanced account of Napoleon Bonaparte's life. Very rarely does McLynn's passion of his subject come in the way of the reading although you do sense that he is passionate about his subject. The book is deep and assumes a fair bit of knowledge that I did not already have. My interest in Napoleon's life and accomplishments was superficial at first, lured mostly by a blurry mystique that surrounds Napoleon's historical person. While reading the book I found it helpful to refer to the web to read up on specifics of military history and strategy as well as french culture. Unfortunately, McLynn does not help much to alleviate the need for looking up words and phrases. For instance, I wish he had referred to blackjack as "blackjack" instead of vingt-et-un. But again, this added to the character of the biography and in the end I appreciated it. I also found McLynn's occasional attempts at psychoanalysis (favouring Jungian perspectives) to add to the flavour of the book-he made sense of a lot of loose ends this way. Perhaps I could say that there was more that I would have hoped to read about in the book. I wish there was more about Napoleon's time at St. Helena and a bit more about his everyday comings and goings at other points in his life. However the book being the tome that it is already covered enough ground to make me very satisfied with what I read and moreover it spurred curiousity into the subject. Overall I would highly recommend this book as a biography of Napoleon. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

I found this to be a highly readable, well balanced and fascinating account of Napoleon's life. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

If you are looking for a well written, balanced, one volume biography of Napoleon this is it! McLynn presents a very readable account of the French Emperor's life together with some fascinating insights. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

I have been studying this mystery of a man for many years and when I picked this book up, I could not set it down. Not only does it go in depth, but the author also mentions several things I had NEVER read anywhere else (i.e. the Little Red Man, etc.) and I would recommend it over almost every Bonaparte bio currently in print.