Rating: 
Summary: a quick, fun, and insightful biography
Review: I must admit two things upfront: (1) I am a great fan of Paul Johnson and read his books voraciously, and (2) although I am a student of history in general, I am somewhat unfamiliar (perhaps embarrassingly so) with the Napoleonic era. So maybe I am more inclined than the next person to view this book favorably, but judging from the other reviews, I don't think I'm too far off in praising this biography.Despite the general chronological flow, Johnson does not construct the book entirely in linear terms, and the repetitions and overlaps can be somewhat frustrating at first. However, organizing Napoleon's life into illustrative episodes or around general themes does have its merits. These themes are that Napoleon-or, rather, Bonaparte, the name he preferred-was not an ideologue but an opportunist; that he lived his life and governed as he led military campaigns-by crushing opposition, inspiring fear, moving quickly, by using propaganda (all of these might be embodied in Bonaparte's crushing the Paris mobs in October 1795, when he gave them "a whiff of grapeshot"); that in him can be found the font of the totalitarian state, which Johnson calls "the ultimate progeny of the Napoleonic reality and myth." Johnson assembles the narrative around these arguments. Johnson also seems to be interested in contingency, in the what-ifs of history-what if France had not bought Corsica from Genoa the year before Bonaparte's birth; what if France would have paid him the promised amount during his "exile" on Elba; what if he had realized the possibilities of Louisiana and cultivated it, instead of waging war on the continent. I have always found this a useful way of viewing history, and Johnson uses it to good effect. He also points to some of the basic historiographic debates within Napoleon scholarship, such as the circumstances of his death on St. Helena. These Penguin Lives books are not intended to be exhaustive analyses of their subjects, but simply general overviews and introductions for a wide audience-with the good ones offering new or interesting takes on these individuals and whetting the reader's appetite to delve deeper into their lives. Johnson succeeds on both accounts, while crystallizing two centuries of writing on Napoleon into 190 pages. His writing is fluid and lucid, the narrative deftly, sometimes wittily told. His arguments are intriguing and maybe even controversial (to some). But that's what makes history so fun-and part of what makes this book so fun, too.
Rating: 
Summary: Generousity means 2 stars - in this case
Review: I totally agree with one of the reviewers that this "Napoleon" book should not be taken seriously. Why??? It is hilarious! The writer talks about 1790's just as if he lived in 1790's! This plus the vivid descriptions of Napoleon's sex life makes this book too funny to take it seriously or use it as a historical study.
If I have bought this book from Fiction shelves I would have definitely rate it 5 stars because it's a great work of fiction!
Rating: 
Summary: lost balance
Review: If you hate Napoleon you will love this book. If you love Napoleon you will hate this book. If you are looking for unbiased writing, you won't find it in Mr. Johnsons offering. The vituperative character assaults start in the introduction, and are laced throughout. This is a simplistic rehash of contemporary negative propoganda from Napoleons enemies, and in no way should be taken as a serious historical study. There is no sense of a balanced viewpoint. Every negative inuendo and rumour finds its way into this book, and are presented as fact. The title should have read "I Hate Napoleon", and is an example of slander at its nastiest.
Rating:
Summary: careless research
Review: It is quite surprising that someone writing a book on Napoleon is so careless as to mix up Napoleon's brothers. He twice refers to Lucien as King of Holland (pages 10 and 109. Of course, it was Napoleon's brother Louis who was King of Holland. The only reference to Louis is as the father of Napoleon III. I assumed The page 10 error was merely a typo. When it was repeated on page 109, I realized that this was not a well-researched book, ans so I put it down at that point.
Rating:
Summary: Napoleon, the father of all our ills...
Review: Johnson simply sees Napoleon as the precursor of the wars and totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. To Johnson Napoleon begat Lenin, Stalin, Hitler Mao, Kim Il Sung, Castro, Peron, Saddam Hussein, Ceausescu, and Gadhafi. In fact Johnson evokes Hitleresque and Stalinesque imagery repeatly throughout the book. But Johnson doesn't stop with his references to Nazis and other unsavory types in order to cut Napoleon down to size. In Johnson's view Napoleon was a "cultural racist," a rapist (literally), ignorant, with bourgeois tastes. Johnson also criticizes Napoleon's military abilities. Napoleon "made little use of observation balloons; he indeed took no notice of airpower, though it was then much discussed. He ignored steam power, though traction engines and the railroad were just over the horizon...One might have said that military rail was made for Bonaparte's geo-strategy of swift transfer of armies. But he preferred merely to improve the old military road system." Of course we are all familiar with the aerial armies, submarine services, rail-based logistical support and steam-powered tank armies of Napoleon's enemies! The book seems almost to have been written from memory. Mistakes abound--Lucien Bonaparte is repeatedly referred to as the King of Holland, Betsy Balcombe becomes Betsy Briars, the Napoleonic electorate was "smaller than the one that produced the...lower house under the ancien régime," Napoleon's artillery drowned ... Russians by firing "red-hot shot" into frozen ponds, Charles XII was king of Sweden during this period and Wellington's Peninsular army was made up of British troops and "Spanish auxiliaries." Johnson's writing style also produces strange turns of phrase that imply things that are just not true--the Directory followed the Terror (does Johnson not know of the Thermidorians or is he ignoring them?); Napoleon instituted conscription, the metric system and the secret police (or that the Revolution had instituted the prefectorial corps); or Johnson's comparisons of casualties between the French armies fighting in 1805-1809 and Wellington's Peninsular campaigns (is Johnson aware of the disparity between the sizes of the respective armies?). According to Johnson, Wellington wore is hat "fore and aft" because he, unlike Napoleon, whose hat was worn from "side to side," liked to "raise his hat, out of courtesy and return salutes." Johnson contends it was "British efforts to circumvent Bonaparte's Continental System [that]...eventually drove the United States into war with the British Empire." According to Johnson the three most important men in Napoleon's administration were Talleyrand, Fouche and Vivant Denon! Johnson proposes in his introduction to examine Napoleon's life "unromantically, skeptically, and searchingly." ... He certainly has removed all the "romance" from Napoleon's career, and he is skeptical. But as a biography "searching" for the real Napoleon, I think it fails. Johnson's characterization of the "bad" Napoleon is as much of a cardboard cutout of the "Man" as the worst hagiographies that Johnson derides. There is a place for an intelligent, modern [popping] of the balloon of Napoleonic myth and legend, but Johnson, like Schom, seems to have merely run wild in the nineteenth century "Napoleon as Ogre" school of historiography. Lacking any fresh insights, with no new ideas, retailing a mixture of hoary nineteenth century myths, the book is superficial at best. The book contains no index, no footnotes, no maps, no illustrations and only a rudimentary note on "Further Reading." Considering the final product, the ... price tag seems high for such a lightweight book.
Rating: 
Summary: The Hollow Man
Review: Johnson's thesis here is that Napoleon is the precursor of such later totalitarians as Stalin and Hitler, whose names recur throughout the book as fellow meglamaniacs interested only in consolidating and centralizing power. Since this is part of the pithy Penguin Lives series, NAPOLEON of course can only go into so much detail about the life of this enigmatic and fascinating little tyrant, but it is an excellent miniature with many indelible moments. I especially like Johnson's portraits of some of Napoleon's subordinates, including Joseph Fouche, his chief of police, who was so terribly arthiritic by the end of his life that he was buried sitting up, and Hudson Lowe, the misunderstood Brit who had the daunting job of watching over Napoleon during his final exile on St. Helena. The battle scenes, encapsulated here for the sake of brevity, are also well done, with Napoleon's defeat by Wellington at Waterloo particularly vivid. Johnson does a good bit of myth-busting here and finds very little actually to admire about N. Of course he was a military genius on the level of Alexander. Of course he was a charismatic figure who won the allegiance of the French people. Otherwise he comes off in this book as a man without a soul who lived only to accrue power. A good book to argue over and very entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: The Hollow Man
Review: Johnson's thesis here is that Napoleon is the precursor of such later totalitarians as Stalin and Hitler, whose names recur
throughout the book as fellow meglamaniacs interested only in consolidating and centralizing power. Since this is part of the pithy Penguin Lives series, NAPOLEON of course can only go into so much detail about the life of this
enigmatic and fascinating little tyrant, but it is an excellent miniature with many indelible moments. I especially like Johnson's
portraits of some of Napoleon's subordinates, including Joseph Fouche, his chief of police, who was so terribly arthiritic by the
end of his life that he was buried sitting up, and Hudson Lowe, the misunderstood Brit who had the daunting job of watching
over Napoleon during his final exile on St. Helena. The battle scenes, encapsulated here for the sake of brevity, are also well
done, with Napoleon's defeat by Wellington at Waterloo particularly vivid. Johnson does a good bit of myth-busting here and finds very little actually to admire about N. Of course he was a military
genius on the level of Alexander. Of course he was a charismatic figure who won the allegiance of the French people.
Otherwise he comes off in this book as a man without a soul who lived only to accrue power. A good book to argue over and very entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: A major life compressed
Review: Johnson's view on Napoleon is always interesting. This is not a military history, although battles are listed they are not discussed in any great length (except Waterloo). This is more about how his influence echoed through the rest of the 19th and 20th century.
I wish the bibliography were a little more organized. After reading this I wanted to read books on Metternich and Talleyrand.
Rating:
Summary: Accomplishes much in under 200 pages
Review: My reasons for choosing this book: my world history background is weak, I wanted to fill in a crucial gap; I did not want to spend several months on a steamer trunk of a biography; I am a fan of the Penguin Lives series; I have read Paul Johnson before and know him to be a fine stylist in content areas that many writers lay waste with stultifying prose. I was not disappointed for the most part.
Understandably, it is impossible to catch every fact, every nuance of Napoleon Bonaparte's life and ongoing contribution to history in just under 200 pages (one Victorian era writer dedicated 10 volumes to the man). Johnson limns the environment of the Enlightenment and revolution that was sweeping the western world and connects the life in terms of its how, why and consequences. He strikes a remarkable balance between the birds-eye view of Bonaparte sweeping through Europe and close-up personal sketches, the former conveying the formidably shrewd man of action, the latter revealing an often comic figure. It is to Johnson's credit that he reconciles the two in one body.
Johnson is in no way forgiving of Bonaparte but he does invite wonder at how he rose up out of inauspicious beginnings, could seize a continent, only to make such glaring errors in strategy at Waterloo and ultimately die in exile on a distant island. The autopsy report is a final ironic twist.
Johnson is not without his biases, but I got very good information from him via bright, fluent prose.
Rating:
Summary: A brief comment
Review: Not to nitpick or anything, but I had one comment that has to do with Napoleon's ultimately disastrous march on Moscow in 1812. One of the reasons it failed was due to epidemic typhus caused by the parasite, Rickettsia prowazeckii, which ran rampant in Napoleon's army and killed 1/3 of his men. This rarely gets discussed much in the histories like this one but deserves to be more well-known. As someone with an interest in both history and the history of science, I think this sort of story makes for fascinating reading also, but as I said, too often it doesn't get covered in the histories. Another interesting thing is that Napoleon's chef invented canning food under heat and pressure in champagne bottles--which could withstand the pressures of reheating--basically not so different from the way you make corned beef, which is also retorched (reheated) in the can. This process kept the food germ-free and prevented spoilage due to bacteria, and was one of the main reasons why Napoleon could field and provision an army of a quarter of a million men in the early 1800's. Anyway, just my two cents.
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