Rating: 
Summary: Jealous Author?
Review: A truly awful book. One begins to think the author has some type of inferiority complex. His arguments against Napoleon become a petty tirade expressed with poor writing and rudimentary prose.
Rating: 
Summary: Biased and incomplete, but entertaining
Review: Depending on the sources used to study or the scholar presenting the information, Napoleon Bonaparte is either thought of in one of two ways. He is considered one of the greatest military strategists in history or a bloodthirsty tyrant, bent on ruling the world. To fully understand Napoleon and his actions, a complete study of Napoleon in his entirety is needed. In the preface of Napoleon Bonaparte, Alan Schom explains that there was no one-volume work dealing with every aspect of his life. Schom attempts to provide an impartial and complete view, while suppressing as little as possible. In providing an unbiased view, scholars detail successes and failures, while providing proof and explanation for each. Schom was unable to provide either.
Throughout the book, Schom presents his bias against Napoleon, instead of presenting the facts and allowing the reader to create their own conclusion. The Napoleonic Code, one of the most famous contributions provided by Napoleon, is only mentioned in passing and is not listed in the index. Schom consistently writes off victories Napoleon gains against superior forces as luck, hardly giving praise for any of his strategical successes. Schom even quotes one of Napoleon's adversaries, the Duke of Wellington, as saying Napoleon's hat was worth 40,000 men. Napoleon was not a perfect leader and his practices were not always acceptable even in those times, but the exclusion or simplification of his contributions poses the question: Why is he considered so great?
Napoleon Bonaparte begins with Napoleon's birth in Corsica and chronicles through his life, ending with his second exile and subsequent death at the hands of Montholon. Much of the focus of Napoleon Bonaparte seems to be predominantly the military side, giving occasional sidebars to his personal life. Intermittently Schom provides background on many of the main characters surrounding Napoleon. This information lasts anywhere from a couple of paragraphs to several pages. Since he dedicates nearly one hundred pages to two appendices, notes, bibliography and index, an additional appendix could provide the reader with what is necessary to understand all characters without the confusing break in the story. Also excluded were translation of French quotes or phrases. Most, if not all were of nominal importance, but still left any non-French speaking reader in the dark.
Unfortunately Schom fails to explain a vital part of Napoleon, which is Napoleon's motivation to do what he did. Napoleon's initial motivation is described as liberating Corsica from the French who had just taken it over. Sometime after his graduation from the military school at Brienne in 1784, Napoleon became pro French, redirecting his energies to serving the country he had so recently loathed. It is further unexplained why Napoleon hated England as much as he did. For as much time as Napoleon spent on his plans for invasion, it would seem Schom would have explained this in detail. To end his exile, Napoleon convinces those around him that his people need him, helping him escape to France. Upon his return, the French flock to him by the thousands, allowing him to amass an army of over 100,000 troops in the span of nineteen days. Schom fails to explain how a murderous tyrant who was so hated by his people accomplishes these feats.
Schom provides a lot of technical information, such as troop numbers and locations before and during battles. He even provides a couple of maps for some of the major ones. Unfortunately, in his attempt to provide such detail, it comes across confusing. More maps and better detail to these maps would have helped immensely, and would have provided the reader with an idea of the battlefield layout and troop movements.
With the exception of a few details, Schom provides a detailed and stimulating perspective of Napoleon. The book covered an interesting topic and the overall organization made the book a fairly easy read. However, this book falls short of Schom's claim of an impartial and complete view and should not be considered individually on its own merits. Other books should be considered along with Napoleon Bonaparte to allow the reader the chance to formulate their own opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Good Overview, but hollow in parts
Review: I am a major history buff, but this is the first book I have ever read about Napoleon or his era. The book is very well written in an easy-to-read style that keeps the reader intrigued throughout. This biography reveals the truly egotistical, self-glorifying, and cold-hearted nature of Napoleon. According to Schom's account, there was never any hope for peace in Europe with Napoleon in power, unless he conquered the whole lot and ruled them as his subjects. A genuine peace was incompatible with Napoleon's personality, which had to be constantly stimulated with unique and seemingly insurmountable challenges. In a sense, Napoleon's genius was the reason for both his success and ultimate failure. He was bent on world conquest and Europe was simply Phase I of his plan. The book did a pretty good job in revealing how inadvertently devastating Napoleon's Continental System was on the economies of Europe, including that of France, while ironically enough least harming the one country whose economic destruction was the System's raison d'etre, Britain. However, something Mr. Schom curiously neglects to mention was that Britain tried to employ a similar system - by blockading France's Atlantic ports and Toulon on the Mediterranean - against France during the Anglo-Prussian Alliance in the 1750s and 60s.While this book is definitely anti-Napoleon, the author bases his opinions of Bonaparte on facts. All biographies will be biased to some extent. Even the author's claim that Napoleon had a lot of luck is based on good analysis of the various situations he [Napoleon] found himself in throughout his life. However, no one achieves all that Napoleon achieved, particularly in the time he achieved it, simply based on luck. When you look at Napoleon's work habits and dedication to his career you will just begin to understand how he achieved all that he did. When you focus soley on Napoleon's battles, it would be utter folly to claim that time and again throughout his illustrious career he achieved those brilliant victories simply because he was lucky. One of the things about brilliant generals, such as Napoleon, is that they realize that battles and wars are unpredictable. Their genius lay in their ability to dicern the mistakes of their opponents and to exploit them with the greatest possible benefit to themselves, while causing the greatest possible harm to their opponents. This is something the Mr. Schom sorely misunderstands. One of the problem's with this book is that it is a somewhat diluted biography because Mr. Schom delves a little too much into the personalities surrounding Napoleon. For example, he dedicates one entire chapter for Napoleon's first foreign minister and two for his sadistic police minister, Fouche. There really is no in-depth analysis of Napoleon's personality by the author, which in my opinion is what a biography should at least attempt to do. I find it laughable and even insulting when Mr. Schom makes the totally overblown statement that the memory of Genghiz Khan pales in comparison to that of Napoleon in its destructiveness. There is no doubt that Napoleon caused the deaths of millions in his campaigns and Mr. Schom is obviously right to criticize him for this. However, constant and, some may argue, unnecessary warfare was a phenomena that had existed in Europe for centuries prior to Napoleon. While claiming to look at Napoleon as a man set in his times, as Mr. Schom does in the introduction, he ultimately takes Napoleon out of his historical context with such outrageous exaggerations. Furthermore, Napoleon never systematically executed innocent civilians as Ghengiz Khan and his Mongol hordes did time and again from China to Persia and into Russia. Those poor people probably whish they had a Napoleon to defend them against the horrors of the Mongol onslaughts. Military buffs will be quite disappointed to find that Mr. Schom dedicates very little attention to Napoleon's campaigns relative to other aspects of his life. He describes them rather superficially and hardly attempts to analyze Napoleon's military philosophy. However, Mr. Schom rightly highlights, which to many may seem surprising, Napoleon's almost complete lack of consideration for elementary logistics and a poor military intelligence service, both of which plagued his entire military career. Finally, Napoleon's total disregard for a permanent army medical corps was astounding. However, these last two facets may also have existed in other armies of that period, which would weaken Mr. Schom's personal critisims of Napoleon in these regards. One thing that is certain - which you will be able to discern from Alan Schom's book - and which also supports Napoleon's reputation as a military genius is that in technology, size and military doctrine, France's army in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was not much better or worse off than those of other continental European powers. In brief, all things were relatively equal between the various European armies - quite unlike the disparity between them on the eve of World War II. Therefore, for one army to truly dominate another it usually required a superior general and one who could improvise on the spot, a good grasp of terrain being indispensable - Austerlitz being a shining example. Mr. Schom even states the Napoleon was a "Master of Improvisation". This is precisely what made Napoleon so successful, even in battles and campaigns in which he was ultimately defeated, usually because of the superior numbers of the opposing army (Leipzig and late Waterloo), poor currier service and intelligence gathering (Eylau, which was a draw, Leipzig, the first allied invasion of France, Waterloo), confusion concerning battle orders (Waterloo) and self-righteous (Murat in Russia), incompetent (Ney at Waterloo) and disobedient, jealous commanders (Bernadotte at Wagram, which was ultimately a victory, Jerome in Russia, Ney at Waterloo, and Murat in Russia). It was also Napoleon's personal intervention into the most dangerous and hotly contested areas of the battlefield that time and again won the day for him, such as at the battles of Wagram, Borodino and during the Saxon Campaign. If this is the first book on Napoleon you have ever read, you definitly should read other books about him to get a more balanced picture, something which I defitely intend to do. In the end, Mr. Schom's biography of Napoleon is a good overview for anyone who wants to learn about "The Great Man". However, you will probably come away from this book, like myself, wanting more, since it attempts - as it claims to do - to cover all aspects of Napoleon's life. Unfortunately, this attempt sacrifices depth into the different aspects of this most complex and fascinating personality.
Rating: 
Summary: A poor vision of Napoleon
Review: I opened Adam Schom's book with high hopes. A one volume biography of Napoleon that should at least give me the bones of his life and impact. But Schom is fundamentally a military historian and it shows in page after page. He does not focus on the important legal and administrative changes that Napoleon introduced throughout his reign. His rule meant that the Aristorocracy could never hope to return to France in the way they ruled before the revolution. Schom basically ignores the French Revolution and its aftermath. He tells little of the social and political whirlpool that led to Bonaparte taking power. His refusal to even acknowledge the existence of the Code Napoleon is staggering and leaves this volume with a great hole that no amount of love affairs and military campaigns can fill. The correct title should have been a military biography, but little else. A grave disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Sloppy Biography, Sloppy Prose
Review: Napoleon is one of those figures in history it is impossible to escape. I have been fascinated with him since I was an adolescent, and I have read a great deal about him in both English and French. The last single volume biography I read was that written by the French historian Andre Castelot. Since that was over twenty five years ago, when this book appeared I was eager to read it to get another overview and--I hoped--a fresh perspective on one of my perennially favorite historical personalities. The first difficulty I encountered with this book was the poor quality of Mr. Schom's writing. Often I had to reread sentences to determine just what their subjects were, to locate their primary verbs, or to figure out whether a given phrase was a sentence's predicate or just a sentence fragment. Punctuation is erratic. At first I thought there may have been problems with typesetting or even with editing; I was finally forced to conclude that it was just sloppily written. OK, I told myself, we don't all write like Gore Vidal, maybe there is merit lurking under this shoddy cover! Unfortunately the problems didn't end there. I don't understand why Mr. Schom, or anyone, would spend years studying and then vilifying (at length: over 800 pages!) any single character from history. Even though he protests otherwise, this biography is hardly balanced and certainly not objective. If he hates the guy so much, why waste his time on him? Maybe it's only a preference of my own, but it seems that a biographer without any sympathy for his subject ought to find another subject. To me lack of sympathy probably indicates lack of understanding. It certainly guarantees that the portrait produced never emerges from two dimensions, however "lively" the manner in which familiar stories are repeated (again.) As I said above, I like Napoleon. I make no apologies. And I will gladly read and consider any well-written, well-balanced, well-argued study of him, even if its conclusion is a negative assessment of the man and his career. Since I found this book poorly written, unbalanced and not really "argued" at all, I am generously giving it a one star rating. But if Mr. Schom were my student in English composition, he wouldn't even get that! Mr. Castelot's book is now dated and maybe somewhat lightweight, and his writing style may not be to everyone's taste. It is balanced, though, and it is fair. I can also heartily recommend Christopher Herrold's study. But I'm still waiting for that fresh overview I hoped for when I picked up Schom's book.
Rating:
Summary: Author's bias overshadows this work
Review: On page xix of the preface of this volume, the author assured the reader that "I have . . . tried to be as impartial as humanly possible." If the snide, sarcastic comments and the vitriolic anti-Napoleonic current that runs through the nearly 800 pages of text that follow represent the limits of Schom's human self-control, the author could be classified at least as uninhibited, and most likely, as a victim of Turrets Syndrome. This work purports not be a history of Napoleonic France unlike the shorter and much better written Age of Napoleon by Christopher Herold, but instead is a biography that focuses on the man himself and his coterie of aides, family, and hangers-on. The author's personal opinions that permeate this otherwise quite readable book not only dripped with Schom's hatred of Napoleon as a man, but also dismissed Napoleon's skills as warrior, and glaringly omitted his skills as an administrator (the Napoleonic Code, Concordat with the Church, and Napoleon's interest in science are given extremely short shrift). The author, however, spared no length in his overly moralistic and bourgeois diatribes against the Bonaparte family. Scores of pages were exclusively dedicated to recounting two-hundred year old rumors of sexual escapades and other dirty dealings of Napoleon's inner circle that seemed more fitting in the pages of Kitty Kelly or Anthony Summers than in a serious historical work. As previous readers have repeatedly pointed out, this book is filled with typographical errors, sentence fragments, and useless maps. Overall, Schom's biography is redolent of a politically-motivated `hatchet job,' and the only redeeming thing I can say about the book is that it is relatively entertaining in parts, if one can look past the author's unnecessarily harsh and disagreeable tone.
Rating: 
Summary: The Next Best thing to being with Napoleon on Campaign
Review: Schom's attains an Austerlitz-like victory with his work here. Schom takes the reader to a higher plateau, allowing one to see Napoleon. The only thing more naive than Napoleon, is Wellington believing he was great for Waterloo. This limited edition book is worth the read and your collection, especially if you're tired of just hearing "here was a battle, and here is who won." Schom gives us something to reflect on. After reading the book, I felt lucky that I hadn't paid triple the cost.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but not good
Review: This books is very easy to read but is extremely long. It portrays Napoleon more as a bumbling lucky idiot than a master war general. Goes into detail of the culture and history of the French government before, during and after him.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but not good
Review: This books is very easy to read but is extremely long. It portrays Napoleon more as a bumbling lucky idiot than a master war general. Goes into detail of the culture and history of the French government before, during and after him.
Rating:
Summary: Good Overview, but hollow in parts
Review: This is a very odd book, an 800 page biography of Napoleon by an author who doesn't think much of Napoleon. According to Alan Schom, the man was a failure as a leader, a failure as a general, a failure as a politician, and a failure as a man. It's not just that Napoleon was ruthless and brutal; a good argument can be made on this front, as I suppose it can of anyone who created an empire for himself. No, according to Schom, Napoleon was incompetent. How, then, did this obscure Corsican, without title, fortune, or powerful backers, rise to such great heights? Having read this book, it's still a mystery to me. Maybe he just got lucky. Schom maintains that Napoleon's reputation for military genius is groundless. He was a careless commander, according to Schom, who failed to gather proper intelligence, provide proper logistical support, and stubbornly refused to accept advice from his generals. How, then, did Napoleon manage to win again and again, remaining virtually unstoppable on the European battlefield? His subordinate generals did the work, but were not given the credit. But wait, according to Schom, those generals were incompetent too... even cowardly. This book reads like a polemic, and Schom is so eager to slander Napoleon (there really is no other word for it) that he contradicts himself repeatedly. Napoleon was highly unpopular; the celebrations in the streets of Paris honoring Napoleon's coronation went on for days. And then Schom descends to the petty, repeatedly mentioning such details as Napoleon's inability to hum in tune. Bonaparte turned a republic into a dictatorship. He invented the modern police state. His incessant wars killed hundreds of thousands. He couldn't *hum*?! Since Schom hasn't a single good word to say about Napoleon, the book soon becomes tiresome. Style is sadly lacking, too. Schom is fond of phrases like, "once again Napoleon failed to" and the sarcastic "of course". It's as if the author is tired of telling this tale of repeated errors by his not very bright subject. Napoleon, according to Schom, never learned. And when an author is tired of his subject, what is the reader to think?
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