Napoleon

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.