Napoleon: A Life - Hardcover

Zamoyski, Adam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465055931 ISBN 13: 9780465055937

Publisher: Basic Books, 2018

Synopsis

The definitive biography of Napoleon, revealing the true man behind the legend "What a novel my life has been!" Napoleon once said of himself. Born into a poor family, the callow young man was, by twenty-six, an army general. Seduced by an older woman, his marriage transformed him into a galvanizing military commander. The Pope crowned him as Emperor of the French when he was only thirty-five. Within a few years, he became the effective master of Europe, his power unparalleled in modern history. His downfall was no less dramatic. The story of Napoleon has been written many times. In some versions, he is a military genius, in others a war-obsessed tyrant. Here, historian Adam Zamoyski cuts through the mythology and explains Napoleon against the background of the European Enlightenment, and what he was himself seeking to achieve. This most famous of men is also the most hidden of men, and Zamoyski dives deeper than any previous biographer to find him. Beautifully written, Napoleon brilliantly sets the man in his European context.

About this title

Review:

"Napoleon is an out and out masterpiece and a joy to read."--Sir Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege

"Adam Zamoyski has retold a story that we thought we knew and made it fresh: Stripping away two centuries of mythology, discarding the apocryphal stories and legends, he finally brings us the real Napoleon."--Anne Applebaum, author of Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

"Always elegant in style and original in analysis. Zamoyski, a master of the sources and of the culture and politics that created his subject, produces a fresh, nuanced, beautifully written, gripping, and outstanding biography of Napoleon that reveals him to be a triumph of luck and accident as much as the invincible genius of the legend."--Simon Sebag-Montefiore, author of The Romanovs and Jerusalem: the Biography

"A lifetime's diligent research and profound thinking about Napoleon and his times has gone into this hugely readable, highly enjoyable and well-balanced biography. Zamoyski is at the top of his game as a biographer."--Andrew Roberts, Visiting Professor, Department of War Studies, King's College, London

"A biography of Napoleon Bonaparte that avoids the well-established military details and gives us the story of a singular man...Illuminating."--Kirkus

"Zamoyski tells the personal side of Napoleon's life...his hopes, his dreams, his self-doubts."--New York Journal of Books

"Zamoyski's book is one of the finest biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte ever written."--MHQ: Quarterly Journal of Military History

"Zamoyski...attempts to cut through the fantasy and retrospective exaggeration to tell the story of an extraordinary, but certainly not superhuman life.... Napoleon emerges from Mr. Zamoyski's book a willful, self-made opportunist...gifted, energetic, brave, lucky, but also a bit ridiculous."--Wall Street Journal

"Engaging and highly readable.... An inclusive life of a historical dynamo."--Washington Times

"Adam Zamoyski's 700-plus-page but very readable Napoleon: A Life...shows how France's tired post-revolutionary leaders in 1796 recognized they were riding a tiger---but didn't expect him to eat them."--World Magazine

About the Author:

Adam Zamoyski is the author of numerous books about Polish and European history, and has written for publications including the Times (London), the Times Literary Supplement, and the Guardian. He lives in London and Poland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0465055931
• ISBN 13: 9780465055937
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 784