Napoleon: A Life

Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

Whenever I’m deciding whether to read a biography or historical account, I confess that I’ll let the quantity of the work influence my decision. If I want to read a book about a famous person from history and Amazon tells me that the book is only about 200 pages, I’ll generally pass. I’m of the opinion that the larger the piece of work, the more detailed. Therefore, it must be better than a volume that one can finish over a long weekend.  So when I saw that this book was almost one thousand pages, I didn’t hesitate to procure.  After finishing this work, I’m now convinced that my thinking may be a bit flawed.

976 pages was way too much in this case (about 800 was actual reading, the rest were indices, notes, etc.)  Don’t get me wrong, this is still an excellent biography, but it was just too detailed.  Part of my thinking might be due to the fact that 95% of the people and places that Napoleon interacts with are people and places that I have never heard of. Throw in the fact that many have complex, foreign names only makes the task more arduous.  My brain simply couldn’t assimilate all of this. I’m willing to bet that there are well over one thousand names and places in this book that most readers are not familiar.

Yes, in many cases, references to people and places are necessary, but the author simply goes overboard in many instances. He doesn’t seem to realize that “less” can actually mean “more”.  He does include several maps of the places where major battles were fought, and this is a huge help. Sadly, it’s quite the handicap, however, when one reads this on a Kindle. There’s no way to “magnify” these tiny things, and it’s still too big of a challenge for my archaic brain to flip back and forth to a particular “page” that holds the map in an electronic format.  (Note: If you’re reading this and have the same problem, here’s a feasible suggestion: Open your e-book on a computer, copy and paste the map on a Word document, and print the Word document. It’s a lot of work, but it helped me tremendously).

With this complaint out of the way, I must again restate that this is an excellent piece of work. I can’t imagine finding a better retrospective on the subject matter. It should be noted that history has a conflicting opinion of Napoleon.  Some say he was a cruel butcher, others maintain that he was a liberating hero. In fact, the author himself alludes to this in the book’s introduction. He maintains that correspondence has been recently uncovered that reveals that Napoleon was a “better” man than what is perceived by many historians.  This book, therefore, has been labeled as one of the more “positive” Napoleon biographies.

We must also remember that Napoleon was a creature of his culture. As a young man placed in the particular time and place (France in the 1790s), we must remember that there was much turmoil, and I would argue that Napoleon would eventually make the environment more palatable then it had been before. He was able to accomplish much because he was a brilliant, smart,…..well…..politician.  For me, the best part of this book was when the author was quoting Napoleon directly. Napoleon was simply brilliant in his thoughts, even though his motives, at times, may have been less than admirable. This man knew how to get what he wanted and how to make things happen.  It does seem, however, like everything he does is designed to push himself higher up the ladder of power.

We then must remember that in these tumultuous times, European countries were always at war with one another. There’s a lot of war in this book.  Good Lord, there’s a lot of war. Napoleon is always conquering, making allies, reneging on promises, fighting battles, commanding armies, and even marrying off his family members to establish alliances to make his kingdom stronger. Not surprisingly, these tendencies are also responsible for his downfall as a leader as well.  Too many successes can give one quite the ego.  Just ask Adolph Hitler. We then see that things can, in fact, go wrong for the mighty in a bad way.  For me, the best (yet harshest) part of this book was Napoleon’s failed march to Moscow.

I’m splitting hairs, but this book could have been much better had the author shaved many inconsequential details, but I guess his point was to be as thorough as possible.  In that aspect, he succeeds.  You certainly won’t feel that you wanted “more” after reading this mammoth profile.

The Berets

The Berets (Book 5 of the Brotherhood of War Series) by W.E.B. Griffin

Let’s see.  This is the (2,3,4…) fifth installment of W.E.B. Griffin’s Brotherhood of War series. There are nine total, and for maximum effect, I recommend that they be read in order. The first installment takes place in the waning days of the second World War. By this book, we’re in the early sixties – right after The Bay of Pigs as the U.S. is sending “advisors” to Viet Nam.

Before this book, each installment had a military rank as its title (The Lieutenants, The Captains, etc.) This book takes a small detour on that path since the Green Berets were such a vital element of the American Military during the time in this book’s history.  Not that any of this should really matter. As it is, it’s very hard for me to look back at the episodes of this multi-volume story and recall who did what at what time in which book. Those types of detail are basically irrelevant. These books are designed to be a story about military people and their families.

Note that these stories don’t contain a lot of actual conflict on the battlefield. We see very little combat in these books. The author is more interested in telling stories about the soldiers and their lives – personal and professional. This is a slight disappointment, but only a slight one. The author is an excellent story teller, so the fact that these books are a tad “soap opera-ish” don’t bother me.  There’s plenty of “military” here, just not a lot on the actual battlefield.

Without keeping a tally, there are about fifteen or so recurring characters in these books, but we do meet plenty of new ones as well. The main three are Colonel’s Lowell, MacMillan, and Felter. The titles of these books reflect whatever rank these three happen to achieve in the volume. Of the many other characters, new and old, some don’t survive throughout the series. This is the military, after all.

To keep things a bit fresh, the author seems to have given his three main actors a bit smaller of a role in this book. We now focus on two younger soldiers, Tom Ellis and Geoff Craig. Ellis was introduced to us in the last installment, but has a much larger role here. Craig is the nephew of Craig Lowell. Like his uncle, he’s a bit of a spoiled brat, but has what it takes to survive in this man’s army. I wasn’t bothered in the slightest by this shift of attention.  You can only keep the same characters in the “same” books interesting for so long. As it is, I’m a bit tired of Craig Lowell’s escapades as a rich/good looking playboy.  It doesn’t take a literary genius to conclude that every time Lowell meets a woman in one of these stories, they end up having sex after a few pages. It gets too formulaic after a while.

From what I understand, the remainder of the books (or most of them) don’t progress quite as far into the future. I think (and I could be wrong) that our characters stay in the 1960s for the bulk of the remainder of their literary life. If that’s the case, I hope that we see more action in terms of combat. The few instances that we do have are quite rewarding.  There’s a brief story within these pages of a few natives of Viet Nam. As Griffin tells their story, it gives the reader a good perspective of the mindset of the Asian warrior and makes an interesting (albeit gruesome) tale within a tale.   I’d like to see more of this in later books.

Regardless, I continue to enjoy these chapters. The author also deserves kudos for carefully “reminding” his reader of his character’s backgrounds.  Unless one reads all nine of these back-to-back, time has a way of making one forget some relevant details of many of the characters.  We’re able to quickly relearn what we may have forgotten without droning on and on about the past.

These books are fairly quick as well. Each book is about 400 pages, but they seem to go much quicker. I can’t help but think that this is mainly because of the quality of the material.

Surprised by Hope

Surprised by Hope by N.T.Wright

I don’t read an awful lot of Christian books. Most of the popular ones seem to be focused on either apologetics or how one is to live properly within the Christian camp. This book by Church of England Bishop N.T. Wright is much different from the norm of what most readers are familiar.  For starters, this guy is deep. This guy is well educated. This guy reminds you of one of those stuffy Oxford-like professors that’s very high in the ‘knowledge’ department, but doesn’t always speak simplistically enough for the layman. This is not a book that one can read over a weekend. Such characteristics can be seen as a drawback, but in most cases, I found his prose to be a welcome change of pace. If you’re a fan of someone such as C.S. Lewis, I would imagine you would be able to enjoy this author’s writing style as well.

The subject of this book focuses on the misunderstanding that centers around many western churches when discussing the eternal destination of the Christian. According to Wright, the common misconception is that we will dwell in heaven forever. Instead, Wright argues, Heaven is only a temporary resting spot, and one day in the future, all Christians past and present will again live on the earth under Jesus’ reign.

The main drawback for this book is that Wright seems to want to overly convince his readers of this fact.  He states scripture after scripture, hymn after hymn, story after story, to prove his point. It’s a bit much. I think the reason that such confusion exists is because, for most people, the debate of “where” we will be is not that significant. Instead, most people when discussing eschatology are more concerned with “how”. As long as we’re in a place “like” heaven, we don’t seem to mind exactly where we’ll unpack our suitcase for eternity.

As Wright makes his arguments, he seems more driven towards left-brain thinking than right-brained thinking.  He doesn’t spend too much time talking about what this new world will be like and what everyone will experience.  He assures us that even though we will all be working and have some sort of job in God’s kingdom, all souls will, in fact, relish the experience. When it comes to such matters that are somewhat mysterious, the author doesn’t claim to offer heavy handed explanations based on what he might feel. If he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, and has no trouble at all stating this in the book.

The big challenge that he gives Christians is that if we are to one day live in this world with Jesus as our king, we must take care of the world as it is now. We must “get it ready” for the glory of God. I think this is where his real struggle is with a lot of Western thinking. Too often, many Christians today have “End Times” syndrome. They’re so convinced that Jesus will rapture the saints at any moment, that they don’t seem to care about things such as acid rain or global warming.  After all, this is only our temporary home, right?  This is what the author is trying so hard to dispel.  Being a Christian, he says, involves a lot of ‘doing’ in addition to ‘witnessing’.

It’s quite interesting (although many would find it insulting) when the author finds faults in many practices that Western (particularly U.S.) churches engage in every Sunday. He’s not a fan of “check off the box” salvation, and he clearly doesn’t believe in such widely held beliefs as the rapture of the church. I’m not one with a degree in theology, so I can’t challenge him on such sentiments, but he seems think that as a body, Christians definitely need to be doing more both within their church and community, and within the world itself.

He doesn’t spend very much time talking about “who gets to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven”. He states that he’s clearly not a Universalist (although he confesses that such a concept might not be completely foreign to God), and the main reason behind this thinking is the wickedness that some people possess. I confess I would have liked to have him expound on this a bit more. He makes references to such obvious atrocities such as Nazism and sexual slavery, but where exactly does he draw the line? Aren’t all evil without the blood of Jesus?  Then, some of his “evils” that he describes didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. He quickly mentions “Hiroshima” for example. Hiroshima?  What exactly is “evil” about this?  I’m assuming he’s referring to the atom bomb, and yes, this was truly a very evil event, but who was ultimately responsible?  Some would argue Harry Truman, but others would say it was the mayhems of Japan and their treatment of American POWs that actually caused the unfortunate event.  So his failure to go into more depth left me a bit disappointed.

I still felt this was an excellent book. If anything, it causes one to rethink and reevaluate such predispositions that many Christians have had, say, forever.  Such debate is healthy, I believe. Although he doesn’t argue that one must “work” towards salvation (at least that wasn’t the impression that I got), he does plainly say that once one is saved, the converted heart should want to work for God’s glory – both in this life and the next.