It is almost inconceivable that there could be a more densely detailed book about Napoleon than this — 800 crowded pages to get him from his birth in 1769 to his acclamation as First Consul for life in 1802. When completed in three or more further volumes, this will be an extremely comprehensive study.
As only French biographers can do, every conceivable motive and alternative scenario is presented at every stage in the astonishing rise of the subject from the petty and parvenu and rather impecunious nobility of Corsica to a greater position of power than anyone had exercised in Europe since Charlemagne, if not the greater Roman emperors. The endless squabbles and shifting alliances within Napoleon’s family, and in the tangled, unforgiving, almost Sicilian politics of Corsica, get a fuller airing than all but the most insatiable Napoleonic devotee would aspire to read. Though the intense politics even in his bedroom is interesting: Josephine wanted nothing to do with Napoleon as monarch, as she saw she would be disembarked because of her inability to produce an heir.
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