Booklists: suggested reading

 

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Napoleon Bonaparte Booklist

 

Fiction & Nonfiction

 

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

Fiction

• Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
  Author: Gulland, Sandra
  Publisher: Touchstone $ 14 ISBN: 0684856069 Date: 1999
  In the first volume of a new trilogy that combines meticulously researched history and superb storytelling, Gulland recounts the story of a young Josephine Bonaparte, who is destined to become one of the most sophisticated and powerful women in history.
  Also: Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe (1999) and The Last Great Dance on Earth (2000)
  Updated 11.2.05
• The Monsters of St. Helena
  Author: Hansen, Brooks
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374270198 Date: 2002
  Library Journal
  Brooks Hansen's new novel is the story of Napoleon Bonaparte's last exile, in 1815, on the island of St. Helena in the Atlantic, "the place on earth farthest from any other place." - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
  Updated 11.20.02
• The Death of Napoleon
  Author: Leys, Simon
  Publisher: FSG $ 15 ISBN: 0374135657 Date: 1991
  "Ladies and gentlemen, alas! The Emperor is dead". The news goes out across Europe, but in fact Napoleon has not died. By means of an ingenious escape, he has returned to the Continent, leaving an impersonator on St. Helena, and it is this double who has unexpectedly and very problematically passed away. Traveling incognito, the Emperor experiences a series of bizarre adventures which bring him face to face with the myth of Napoleon as it is disconcertingly played out in everyday life. After a visit to Waterloo and near-arrest at the French border, he eventually arrives in Paris, where he falls in with some veteran Bonapartists and visits an asylum where most of the inmates are laboring under the mistaken impression that they are he. Will Napoleon ever recapture his true identity? Who, in the end, is he, now that "the Emperor is dead"? Simon Leys's truculent, delightful fable poses these and other questions in a rare work of fiction that is continually surprising and effervescent. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 11.2.05
• The Hundred Days
  Author: O'Brian, Patrick
  Publisher: Norton $ 24 ISBN: 0393046745 Date: 1998
  PW
  In O'Brian's most ambitious book to date, Napoleon escapes from Elba, and the fate of Europe hinges on a desperate mission: Stephen Maturin must ferret out the French dictator's secret link to the powers of Islam, and Jack Aubrey must destroy it. An intriguing exercise in "what if . . ". history, encompassed in a magnificently rounded and complex work of fiction.
  Updated 10.31.05
• The Battle
  Author: Rambaud, Patrick
  Publisher: Grove $ 25 ISBN: 0802116620 Date: 2000
  Kirkus LJ
  The winner of the Prix Goncourt and the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Academie Francaise, The Battle is a brilliant, compelling novelization of the battle of Essling, Napoleon's first major defeat.
  Also: The Retreat (2004)
  Updated 10.25.05
• The Passion
  Author: Winterson, Jeanette
  Publisher: Atlantic $ 16.95 ISBN: 0871131838 Date: 1988
  An uttlerly comtemporary historical story. In the early nineteenth century, two remarkable people are overwhelmed by passion: Henri, the faithful chef who follows Napoleon from glory to ruin, and Villanelle, the daughter of a Venetian gondolier.
  Updated 11.2.05

Nonfiction

• The Final Act: The Roads to Waterloo
  Author: Dallas, Gregor
  Publisher: Holt $ 35 ISBN: 0805031847 Date: 1997
  Kirkus
  Europe, 1814-1815. The continent grapples with an uneasy peace. The fires of revolution have been banked, the ardor of Napoleonic expansion dimmed. No diplomatic event in history has such a stellar cast: Tsar Alexander, Talleyrand, Wellington, Castlereagh, and Metternich, along with a supporting cast of rogues, mistresses, clairvoyants and spies, they turned Vienna into a theater of intrigue that shaped the face of Europe for the century to come. And in the shadows--Napoleon, who would rise again to challenge them at Waterloo.
  Updated 10.25.05
• Napoleon: A Political Life
  Author: Englund, Steven
  Publisher: Scribner $ 35 ISBN: 0684871424 Date: 2003
  LJ
  The first modern, comprehensive political biography of history's most famous general, with new and startling analyses and interpretations.
  Updated 11.1.05
• The Fall of Napoleon: The Final Betrayal
  Author: Hamilton-Williams, David
  Publisher: Wiley $ 30 ISBN: 0471118621 Date: 1995
  PW
  This important study of the cause and effects of Napoleon's removal from power tracks the significant events in his illustrious career through to his downfall and, while doing so, charts the clandestine diplomatic intrigues linking Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia in the quest for the Emperor's demise. Using substantial new research, David Hamilton-Williams questions many of the established views presented in Napoleonic literature to date. By disclosing hitherto secret terrorist organizations, uncovering the attempts to assassinate Napoleon, highlighting unbridled political duplicity, and demonstrating a host of previously misinterpreted signals and actions, he instigates a fresh assessment of the fall of Napoleon, new reasons to consider how much it was self-inflicted and how much it became inevitable given the combined forces - 'friend' as well as 'foe' - ranged against him. However great his military campaigns, how often he was victorious on the battlefield, Napoleon was destined to be deposed by political connivance and personal betrayal. This volume is the second of a trilogy by David Hamilton-Williams. In Waterloo: New Perspectives he shed new light on the greatest battle of all, causing historians to reappraise their opinions and revise their maps; in The Last Battles: Napoleon, Murat and the Italian Campaign he reviews the chequered partnership between the Emperor and the commander he made King of Naples. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 10.31.05
• Napoleon Bonaparte
  Author: Schom, Alan
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 40 ISBN: 0060172142 Date: 1997
  LJ PW
  This lively, brilliantly written one-volume biography captures the spectacular rise and dizzying fall, the battlefield victories and personal struggles, of one of history's most powerful and fascinating figures. Filling a remarkable gap, historian Alan Schom offers the most complete picture ever of Napoleon Bonaparte, "the scourge of Europe" and France's greatest hero.
  Updated 11.1.05
• The Prisoners of Cabrera: Napoleon's Forgotten Soldiers, 1809-1814
  Author: Smith, Denis
  Publisher: Four Walls $ 24 ISBN: 1568582129 Date: 2001
  Kirkus
  After their surrender at the Battle of Bailen, 12,000 French prisoners of war were exiled to the bleak island of Cabrera in the Mediterranean, with only the clothes on their backs. This is the meticulously researched account of their story, never before told in English.
  Updated 10.25.05
• The Rose of Martinique: A Life of Napoleon's Josephine
  Author: Stuart, Andrea
  Publisher: Grove $ 27.50 ISBN: 0802117708 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Josephine Bonaparte was one of the most remarkable women of the modern era. In this acclaimed biography, Andrea Stuart brings her so utterly to life that readers finally understand why Napoleon's last word before dying was the name he had given her, Josephine.
  Updated 11.2.05
• Moscow 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March
  Author: Zamoyski, Adam
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 29.95 ISBN: 0061075582 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Moscow 1812 is a riveting history of Napoleon's fateful invasion of Russia in 1812, when the tide finally turned against his growing empire.
  Updated 11.2.05

For Kids

• Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars
  Author: Marrin, Albert
  Publisher: Viking $ 14.99 ISBN: 0670834807 Date: 1994
  SLJ
  Follows Napoleon Bonaparte from his origins as a lowly soldier to his rise to military power and his conquest of Europe.
  Grades: 7+ Category: History