{"id":21140,"date":"2025-09-15T20:14:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T00:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21140"},"modified":"2025-09-15T20:14:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T00:14:22","slug":"napoleon-a-life-by-paul-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21140","title":{"rendered":"‘Napoleon: A Life,’ by Paul Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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But whereas Bonaparte wore his hat square on, Wellington put the ends fore and aft. Why? Wellington liked to raise his hat, out of courtesy and to return salutes. Bonaparte rarely raised his hat to anyone.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So I had picked up a mystery novel,<\/strong> one of those e-books you can get through free offers. The description called it \u201ca gripping thriller.\u201d (They all say they\u2019re \u201cgripping\u201d these days. The word \u201cgripping\u201d has become a meaningless annex to the article \u201ca.\u201d) The book proved to be as gripping as an empty cotton glove. The hero meandered through his days, having breakfast, lunch, and dinner with his girlfriend (we were helpfully informed exactly what they ate on each occasion), discussing business with his partner, and occasionally seeing reports on TV about the murder which \u2013 one assumes \u2013 would eventually become interesting. I gave up on that book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I turned to the late Paul Johnson\u2019s Napoleon: A Life <\/a><\/em>(part of the Penguin Lives<\/em> series), and found there all the drama and excitement I\u2019d missed in the \u201cgripping thriller.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Penguin Lives<\/em> books are short by design, and Paul Johnson\u2019s particular talents as a historian suit the format perfectly. He was a master of the broad brush (and, frankly, the drumhead verdict). Napoleon\u2019s life is one of the most epic in history, and the reader of this book is swept up \u2013 and horrified \u2013 to observe its progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonaparte (he rarely used his first name, and Johnson accordingly calls him Bonaparte most of the time) was the scion of impoverished minor nobility on the island of Corsica, ruled in those days by the French. He benefited from being the right man in the right place at the right time, a soldier exquisitely equipped to rise in the chaos that was about to descend on France. Bonaparte had a natural genius for maps and mathematics, enabling him to plan campaigns and strategies with remarkable prescience. His approach to tactics, on the other hand, was simple, based on dividing the enemy, softening them up with artillery, and taking the offense. These qualities worked well for him\u2026 until they didn\u2019t anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I personally have never liked Napoleon. Among other matters, I blame him for the British blockade of Norway, which caused untold suffering. Author Johnson and I are entirely compatible on this point \u2013 Johnson has little good to say about the man. He caused the loss of \u201cfour or five million lives,\u201d left his country more or less as distressed as he found it (though smaller in population), and provided the model for every tyrant of the 20th<\/sup> Century, from Hitler to Mao.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has his admirers, and many books exist to serve the needs of such readers. But for the person who (like me) has some interest in the period (and prejudice against its subject), but not enough motivation to plow through hundreds of pages of details, Napoleon: A Life<\/em> offers a vivid and entertaining introduction to a life which, whatever you think of it, was undeniably important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But whereas Bonaparte wore his hat square on, Wellington put the ends fore and aft. Why? Wellington liked to raise his hat, out of courtesy and to return salutes. Bonaparte rarely raised his hat to anyone. So I had picked up a mystery novel, one of those e-books you can get through free offers. The … Continue reading ‘Napoleon: A Life,’ by Paul Johnson<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[5709,4497],"class_list":["post-21140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction","category-reviews","tag-napoleon-bonaparte","tag-paul-johnson"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21140"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21143,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21140\/revisions\/21143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}