Looking for a biography

[GreatEngineer]

I have a lot of respect for the opinions of CFC users, so I figured I'd go to everyone for help in this case. I'm looking for a good biography on Napoleon Bonaparte. I have searched Borders and Amazon.com with some luck, but of course I would like some help narrowing down the many available choices. Does anyone know of a particularly spectacular Napoleon biography?

Things to consider:
- I don't want straight military history. Yeah, some info about battles, strategy, etc. is good reading, but Napoleon was far more versatile than that. (in real life... )
- I'm not doing a report or anything, so the book should be more readable than a textbook.

Thoughts?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Browse here:

http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95aug/napoleon.html#books

 

[Dachs]

I enjoyed Horne's How Far From Austerlitz but it only covers one decade of his life in any detail. I have heard good things about Robert Asprey's series on his life but I haven't actually read them.

 

[ParkCungHee]

After just reading through my libraries section on Bonaparte Biographies, I recommend you avoid anything written by British men from the 50s and 60s.

 

[GreatEngineer]

After just reading through my libraries section on Bonaparte Biographies, I recommend you avoid anything written by British men from the 50s and 60s.

Haha, what about British men from the '00s? This Asprey series has great reviews, so I'm going to look into that. But also, I can't read French well enough to read a REAL Napoleon book (high school French just isn't enough... ) so do you have any specific ones you can recommend?

 

[Agent327]

Wanting one for myself I got Frank McLynn's Napoleon. A Biography. It covers military history, but also all of his personal life, including a bit long coverage of the episode on St. Helena. 667 pages long it is. I can recommend it.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Haha, what about British men from the '00s? This Asprey series has great reviews, so I'm going to look into that. But also, I can't read French well enough to read a REAL Napoleon book (high school French just isn't enough... ) so do you have any specific ones you can recommend?

No. All my library has is Biographies by british historians from the 60s. So I can heartily recommend no biographies on Napoleon whatsoever.

 

[JohnRM]

Somewhat related to this...

Apparently, there have been more books written on Napoleon than the number of days that he was alive. I don't know whether this is true or not.

 

[Agent327]

Might be, as there have been appearing books on Napoleon ever since the Napoleonic era (and there are more sources on him than on, say, Caesar).

 

[ParkCungHee]

Somewhat related to this...

Apparently, there have been more books written on Napoleon than the number of days that he was alive. I don't know whether this is true or not.

Someone compiled a bibliography on him once and found over 100,000 books. That was 60 years ago.

 

[Lord Baal]

Somewhat related to this...

Apparently, there have been more books written on Napoleon than the number of days that he was alive. I don't know whether this is true or not.

The same probably holds true for Hitler as well. They're modern enough for there to be numerous sources, and both died early. I'm not doing the damn research myself though.