Books reviews, current events, and other musings

Yesterday I finished Alan Schom's biography Napoleon Bonaparte. I usually don't care for biographies, since they tend to go into too much detail about a single individual. However, this is the best biography that I've read, in part because so much happened during Napoleon's life.

It's a fascinating period of history, in which an outsider took control of chaotic post-Revolutionary France and ends up conquering most of Europe. This book fills in the subtleties about how that transpired, in a treatment that's very educational for someone who only knows the bare outlines about the Napoleonic Era.

Schom presents a balanced treatment of Napoleon, explaining both his military brilliance and some incredibly stupid mistakes that he made. He exhibits Napoleon's strength and flaws, describing how his strengths enabled him to survive the horribly messy situations that he got into.

Naturally, much of the book describes Napoleon's various military campaigns. Military history always puts me into a daze, though Schom's descriptions are as good as I've seen. Also, it's emotionally tiring to read about year after year of battles, with massive casualties on all sides. Looking at things from the aggressor's perspective was kind of unsettling.

Schom portrays Napoleon's various siblings (many of whom became kings and other royalty), ministers, and generals (whose identities tended to blur in my mind). With that background, you can see how Napoleon seized and maintained power, and how he managed to take on the rest of the world. Schom also describes the quirky things that Napoleon did with his absolute power, such as forbidding an American sister-in-law, who he disapproved of, from setting foot on the European continent.

This is an excellent biography, focusing on what Napolean did instead of trying to psychoanalyze him.