Napoleon

One message that I retrieved from this book merely reading 20 pages is that " any person achievement depends on circumstance that he was facing at that time "Thus this book gives ideology and experiment of Napoleon . However I have to read full book . But this book is a master piece!!!!

The book is damaged and back cover is shabby. I wanted to gift to somebody.

This is a wonderful book, utterly absorbing and throwing light on many aspects of life at that time. Surprisingly, despite lots of truly awful aspects of Napoleon’s character, one ends up with sympathy for the man - at least I did. Unlike so many megalomaniac tyrants both before and after his time, he really tried to do good, in his case for France. He wasn’t driven by ideology. He didn’t kill or torture his rivals for power, or at least not often and never with the lust for vengeance of a Hitler or a Stalin. And as the author remarks, his vaulting ambition was no worse than that of many who were famous but less successful. Zamoyski manages to link his change of fortune and deteriorating judgement to a diminution in his energy and expose some very human reasons for it. It is an excellent study of a real genius - however unpleasnt it must have been to have to deal with him.

I have read tons of books about Napoleon, and I know Zamoyski's books very well too. I consider "1812" the best book written on Napoleon or his era and even one of the best historical accounts written about anything anywhere, so I do hold Zamoyski in a very high esteem. But I don't know man, this book puzzles me. It starts out great, has a really nice pace to it, its very detailed, and Zamoyski is an excellent writer, but somewhere after the first third or so it kind of loses momentum, and the second half was kind of a drag for me. It was as the writer himself lost interest, or had a really strict deadline, or wanted to get into a very strict page limitation. I just need to compare it to Andrew Roberts' book because they came out closely, they are very similar and also the two authors make a living about bashing each other on auditoriums (and, thankfully, Youtube). And, although I think Zamoyski is a far better writer, I just see no reason whatsoever to pick up this book and not Andrew Roberts' version. It is much longer and much detailed, and maybe a bit less written, just overall more balanced. I read Roberts' version just recently, and my main idea was to buy this to see Napoleon from a different perspective. Roberts is very famously a Napoleon lover and Zamoyski really does not like the man, so I thought the two books will give me a great, objective all around idea about the man. But it really did not. Zamosykis critisism of Napoleon is not really in this book at all, so this was just a bit rushed and not very interesting account on the same events I just read about. I do still love Zamoyski, but pick up 1812 instead.

I've read much on and around Napoleon and that era, but some events have never really been explained, such as why and how come Napoleon 'suddenly' appeared to make his coup d'etat? Nothing happens 'suddenly' in history. Now, thanks to Adam Zamoyski's painstaking research a logical progression is laid out, not just in connection with this poser, but repeatedly.I am deeply grateful.Huge fan of Rites of Peace as well. Both essential reading. And he writes so well. Reading his work is a privilege.

As the titles promises, you get to see much more than just the myth and facts that everyone knows. You get to know his personality, his thinking, his motivation and his limitations as a human. The book covers his whole life span, from an impoverished provincial backwater, to the top of the world an back. An interesting story about the interaction of a man and power, and hubris. The must-read work on this historic figure.

A very different take on Napoleon. After years of reading detailed analysis of napoleon’s battles it was refreshing to read about the man. I found the book well worth the read.