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.