The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the
acclaimed author of Churchill and The Last King of America--winner
of the LA Times Book prize, finalist for the Plutarch prize, winner of
the Fondation Napoleon prize and a New York Times bestseller
"A thrilling tale of military and political genius... Roberts is an
uncommonly gifted writer." --The Washington Post
Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in
history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and
astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius
Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times.
Andrew Roberts's Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take
advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon's thirty-three thousand
letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character
and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker,
decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant
wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance
of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St.
Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century.
An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of
Napoleon's sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in
archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as
acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history.
Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial,
insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.
