Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life

Rating:
Summary: One-sided view of Napoleon
Review: Wellington once said about Napoleon that "his hat on a battlefield was worth forty thousand men." Alan Schom obviously doesn't agree with that assessment but this book is still worth reading despite the author's contempt for his subject. When Schom involves himself with the cast of characters surrounding Napoleon he gets much better results and he is indeed insightful in his descriptions of Fouche, Marshal Ney, and many others. Unfortunately, Schom's overall negative tone blots out much of what is presented here. He deliberately overlooks and omits nearly everything that the Emperor achieved on a positive note. Even Napoleon's worst critics will agree that he was something of a genius on the battlefield, yet Schom goes to great lengths to undermine and challenge those facts. Perhaps Mr. Schom is the wrong man to be writing about Napoleon to begin with. There's no doubt that the Emperor's reign had catastrophic consequences for Europe at the turn of the 19th Century. But there also should be no denial about his brazen and bold tactics to succeed on a grand scale and to literally change the course of history. Napoleon, despite all his faults documented here, was never the supreme evil ogre that Mr. Schom would like you to believe.

Rating:
Summary: Napoleon is not Hitler
Review: Why is it that when I was done reading this book, the author left a feeling that Napoleon was some sort of a warmongering scumbag, a 19th century version of Adolf Hitler with no redeeming value? I was bit shocked at the level of bias that the author had against Napoleon. Actually I shouldn't be since I read couple of his earlier books and they were definitely anti-Napoleon in nature. To called this book a "hatchet job" on Napoleon cannot be too far from the truth. The author really seem to distaste Napoleon and I am afraid that make him totally unfit to write his biography. If you hate Napoleon, then this book is for you. If you want a more fair and objective biography, please look else where.