The distinguished historian Andrew Roberts has written his greatest book to date and has made an important contribution to the vast Napoleonic literature. His Napoleon: A Life (whose British title is Napoleon the Great) is a monument of research and organization, adheres to the author’s well-established high-stylistic standard, and reaches a new summit of thoroughness and balance in his treatment of probably the most gigantic personality in the history of the world (barring those widely regarded as partially divine).1 Every significant or interesting aspect of Napoleon’s life is dealt with: the general, the administrator and reformer, the law-giver, the academician and intellectual, the promoter of science, the ardent womanizer and lover, the public relations genius, the politician, and the creator of an immense mystique whose power has survived the two centuries following his death. And Roberts examines all elements of Napoleon’s administration, including its financial record and fiscal and social consequences, as well as Napoleon’s intricate diplomatic history. At many points throughout the work, Roberts considers alternative steps Napoleon might have taken and makes apt historical comparisons.

Napoleon was possibly the most prominent personality in the world from shortly after he took over the tattered and demoralized ragamuffin Army of Italy in 1796 until his death in 1821, after six years of exile following Waterloo. And few people have remotely approached him in celebrity: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Lincoln, and a few twentieth-century statesmen, evil and benign (Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Churchill, Roosevelt),