Andrew

Not your usual Steinbeck novel

Revisado: 06-03-15

Raw and honest like Tortilla Flats and Cannery Row, but with a distinct romantic style.

An intimate psychological portrait, bordering on the surreal.

Presages authors like William Vollmann and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

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Narration is not that bad

Revisado: 06-30-13

I put off this book for months, due to the bad reviews of the narrator, which seemed to be corroborated by the sample from the first few paragraphs of the book. Eventually I decided to take a chance, and was glad I did.

The narrator gets into a decent rhythm, and his American accent is a useful contrast to the many other accents from French and British accounts of naval battles.

This book contained a lot of stories and historical detail that I was not previously aware of, despite having read several other histories of this period, including Napoleon's Wars by Charles Esdaile.

Overall, a satisfying story with a satisfying narrator.

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Not an international perspective

Revisado: 01-18-13

This book does not live up to the promise of answering the question, "What was it that made the countries of Europe fight one another for so long and with such devastating results?"

I expected an analysis of the allies, in the style of Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals". Or a study of the period and cultures, like Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror".

Instead, the first third is a litany of observations about the decade before Napoleon came to power, that only make sense to someone already familiar with that period of history. If you don't know the difference between a Jacobin and a Jacobite, or the Terror and the Directory, or the story behind a "whiff of grapeshot", you might as well skip this section.

The second section goes into more traditional historical detail about the peninsular war and skirmishes in South America, but they are typically brief and unsatisfying. Foreign ministers are named, and treaties are cited, but with scant detail about motivations or consequences.

The third section pays the usual homage to Napoleon's foray into Russia, interleaving a brief mention of the War of 1812 in the U.S. with the morbid accounts of the retreating French.

It is a thin sketch with few broad strokes, that doesn't provide an overall picture.

The main theme is that Napoleon's Wars were a product of a personal psychological and political need for continual military victories to maintain legitimacy. At every opportunity, when peace was possible and even achieved, Napoleon chose to pick new fights and maintain a perpetual state of war.

David Wetzel's lectures are a much better alternative to this book, such as History 162A - Empires, Wars, and Nations 1648-1914 - Fall 2012 UC Berkeley, available on iTunesU.

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Excellent story and storyteller

Revisado: 11-29-12

Like Spielberg's movie Lincoln, this story shows how well meaning people employ ignoble means to achieve noble ends, suffering their own human foibles along the way.

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