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Bell emphasizes the importance of the French Revolution in understanding Napoleon's career. The revolution made possible the unprecedented concentration of political authority that Napoleon accrued, and his success in mobilizing human and material resources. Without the political changes brought about by the revolution, Napoleon could not have fought his wars. Without the wars, he could not have seized and held onto power. Though his virtual dictatorship betrayed the ideals of liberty and equality, his life and career were revolutionary.
* [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300137540/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0300137540&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=958d1d18bfc9100dcf8f584bc785b993 Napoleon: The Path to Power ] by Philip Dwyer
Philip Dwyer sheds new light on Napoleon’s inner life—especially his darker side and his passions—to reveal a ruthless, manipulative, driven man whose character has been disguised by the public image he carefully fashioned to suit the purposes of his ambition. Dwyer focuses acutely on Napoleon’s formative years, from his Corsican origins to his French education, from his melancholy youth to his flirtation with radicals of the French Revolution, from his first military campaigns in Italy and Egypt to the political-military coup that brought him to power in 1799. One of the first truly modern politicians, Napoleon was a master of “spin,” using the media to project an idealized image of himself. Dwyer’s biography of the young Napoleon provides a fascinating new perspective on one of the great figures of modern history.
* [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465055931/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0465055931&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=0ba7078360db028ec773f23136cb462b Napoleon : A Life] by Adam Zamoyski
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. Unfortunately, this is one of the two books on this list called ''Napoleon: A Life''. The publishers should have used a little bit of imagination and done a better differentiating these two books.
* [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0025236601/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0025236601&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=ad50ad39e3f61889d2fdf8820820d856 The Campaigns of Napoleon ] by David G Chandler Napoleonic war was nothing if not complex—an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of moves and intentions, which by themselves went a long way towards baffling and dazing his conventionally-minded opponents into that state of disconcerting moral disequilibrium which so often resulted in their catastrophic defeat. The Campaigns of Napoleon is an exhaustive analysis and critique of Napoleon's art of war as he himself developed and perfected it in the major military campaigns of his career. Napoleon disavowed any suggestion that he worked from formula (“Je n'ai jamais eu un plan d'opérations”), but military historian David Chandler demonstrates this was at best only a half-truth. To be sure, every operation Napoleon conducted contained unique improvisatory features. But there were from the first to the last certain basic principles of strategic maneuver and battlefield planning that he almost invariably put into practice. To clarify these underlying methods, as well as the style of Napoleon's fabulous intellect, Mr. Chandler examines in detail each campaign mounted and personally conducted by Napoleon, analyzing the strategies employed, revealing wherever possible the probable sources of his subject's military ideas. Unfortunately, this is an older book and it only comes in hardcover. Due to its high price, we recommend that you check it out from a library.
* With Eagles to Glory: Napoleon and His German Allies in the 1809 Campaign by John H Gill
* Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts
* [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735222622/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0735222622&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=da96438d744f07ccbf7e043bd99efae2 The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba From Exile to Escape ] by Mark Braude
In the spring of 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated. Having overseen an empire spanning half the European continent and governed the lives of some eighty million people, he suddenly found himself exiled to Elba, less than a hundred square miles of territory. Braude dramatizes this strange exile and improbable escape in granular detail and with novelistic relish, offering sharp new insights into a largely overlooked moment. He details a terrific cast of secondary characters, including Napoleon’s tragically-noble official British minder on Elba, Neil Campbell, forever disgraced for having let “Boney” slip away; and his young second wife, Marie Louise who was twenty-two to Napoleon’s forty-four, at the time of his abdication. What emerges is a surprising new perspective on one of history’s most consequential figures, which both subverts and celebrates his legendary persona.
*[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0306811375/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0306811375&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=41aca4dfc5abd2cbc65d9376ad404b37 The End of the Old Order (Vol.1)] by Frederick Kagan Perhaps no person in history has dominated his or her own era as much as Napoleon. Despite his small physical stature, the shadow of Napoleon is cast like a colossus, compelling all who would look at that epoch to chart their course by reference to him. For this reason, most historical accounts of the Napoleonic era-and there are many-tell the same Napoleon-dominated story over and over again or focus narrowly on special aspects of it.
Frederick Kagan, a distinguished historian and military policy expert, has tapped hitherto unused archival materials from Austria, Prussia, France, and Russia, to present the history of these years from the balanced perspective of all of the major players of Europe. In The End of the Old Order readers encounter the rulers, ministers, citizens, and subjects of Europe in all of their political and military activity-from the desk of the prime minister to the pen of the ambassador, from the map of the general to the rifle of the soldier..*[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1906509417/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1906509417&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=d13f5675f147ea9609eb4ec2a40fe332 The Great Retreat: Napoleon's Grand Armée in Russia ] by Alexander Korolev
The Great Retreat is an unprecedented, visually rich account of Napoleon’s march back from Moscow, built on a remarkable discovery of newly unearthed artifacts and archival sources. It tells the story of how Napoleon lost nearly 400,000 men to the brutal cold, poor planning, and effectively destructive harrying of the Russian army at his heels. Featuring more than 1,600 illustrations and detailed biographies of all 289 regiments and units involved in the retreat, supplemented by unforgettable eyewitness accounts, this book brings Napoleon’s retreat, and its unfathomable human cost, to life in a wholly new way. No student of Napoleon or fan of military or Russian history will want to miss it.
* <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZVEJWHM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00ZVEJWHM&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=e6bd0316e8eda7c55a14bf9e2fefa5d1 The Fatal Knot: The Guerrilla War in Navarre and the Defeat of Napoleon in Spain]</i> by John Lawrence Tone
John Tone recounts the dramatic story of how, between 1808 and 1814, Spanish peasants created and sustained the world's first guerrilla insurgency movement, thereby playing a major role in Napoleon's defeat in the Peninsula War. Focusing on the army of Francisco Mina, Tone offers new insights into the origins, motives, and successes of these first guerrilla forces by interpreting the conflict from the long-ignored perspective of the guerrillas themselves.
