A fairly useful biography of Napoleon and his campaigns, but ruined by a lot of specious psychobabble, a lot of unevidenced opinion, some rather sexist attitudes and some terrible howling errors. The two howlers that jumped out at me were that 1. Napoleon wasn't particularly short, actually, so attempts to give him a 'complex' about his height are nonsense, and 2. the persistent mistitling of Friedrich Wilhelm, King of Prussia, as 'Kaiser' or 'Emperor'. If you can't get something as simple as that right, it lends no confidence to the rest of your research. ( )

Mr. McLynn's book confirms my view that a fair account of a great man's life is better approached through a biographer who does not emanate from the same country. Although I read somewhere that Mr. McLynn is supposed to be "worshipping at the shrine", I found his biography thoroughly fair and balanced, very well written, constantly interesting and free of the rubbish very often found in French books on Napoleon, of which there are many. ( )

3653. Napoleon A Biography - Frank McLynn (read 24 Nov 2002) Even though it is less than five years since I read Alan Schom's biography of Napoleon, when I saw this new one I could not resist. This is a bit more balanced than Schom's (who could not find one good thing to say about his subject) and I think is a better work, though it lacks footnotes, but there are 49 pages of "sources" with most being French. The career of Napoleon never ceases to amaze and I enjoyed this book a lot, though much was not new. One stands in wonder how quickly Napoleon turned into a haughty person, and how all his family became rapacious people. This was a great book to read. ( )