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The Nanotech War: Star Trek Voyager (Star Trek: Voyager)
by Steven PiziksThroughout human history, mankind has turned its goals and dreams toward exploration. With wagon trains, ships, satellites and starships, humanity has chosen to seek out the new frontier, to explore new worlds, and to go where no human has gone before-even to the furthest reaches of the Delta Quadrant. There, Captain Janeway and the crew of the Starship Voyager have discovered many strange and wondrous civilizations...but few as alien as the Chiar. An advanced and scientiÞc people who have made great strides with nanotechnology, the Chiar expanded internally rather than externally. Every inch of their planet is crawling with the tiniest bits and pieces of artiÞcial intelligence imaginable, working in concert as the new lifeblood of this mechanical world. The people themselves are inseparable from their nanites, which layer their skin and provide extra limbs or senses as required. Caught up in a bitter civil conþict, some Chiar will try to take advantage of their meeting with the crew of Starship Voyager. They imagine that their homegrown nanites can harness the incredible power of the deadly Borg, and instead set in motion an experiment that goes devastatingly out of control.
Nanotechnology to Aid Chemical and Biological Defense
by Terri A. CamesanoThis book presents research into chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) defense and environmental security, exploring practical implications of the research. Contributions from a diverse group of international civilian researchers present the latest work on nanotechnology problems in this area, looking at detection, protective technologies, decontamination and threats to environmental security due to bacteriophages and nanomaterials. Highlights include the potential of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to characterize the nanoscale properties of microbial pathogens, the development of bacteriophage-based therapeutics, prophylactic and diagnostic preparations and their uses in different fields, such as medicine, veterinary, agriculture, food and water safety, amongst others. Readers may also consider an inexpensive bioassay suited for assessing chemical poisoning in the environment such as the presence of pesticides, sensors to detect ultra-trace quantities of the explosive Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) using nanotubes and electrochemical sensors to simultaneously detect and reduce the explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT) to 2,4,6-triaminotoluene (TAT) in solution. This book shows how cooperative research among NATO countries and NATO partners can make a critical contribution to meeting the opportunities and challenges of nanotechnology problems relevant to chemical and biological defense needs. The papers presented here are representative of contributions made to the Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on September 22-26, 2014 in Antalya, Turkey, to address the NATO SPS Key Priority of Defense against CBRN Agents and Environmental Security.
Nanoweapons: A Growing Threat to Humanity
by Louis A. Del MonteNanoweapons just might render humanity extinct in the near future—a notion that is frightening and shocking but potentially true. In Nanoweapons Louis A. Del Monte describes the most deadly generation of military weapons the world has ever encountered. With dimensions one-thousandth the diameter of a single strand of human hair, this technology threatens to eradicate humanity as it incites world governments to compete in the deadliest arms race ever. In his insightful and prescient account of this risky and radical technology, Del Monte predicts that nanoweapons will dominate the battlefield of the future and will help determine the superpowers of the twenty-first century. He traces the emergence of nanotechnology, discusses the current development of nanoweapons—such as the “mini-nuke,” which weighs five pounds and carries the power of one hundred tons of TNT—and offers concrete recommendations, founded in historical precedent, for controlling their proliferation and avoiding human annihilation. Most critically, Nanoweapons addresses the question: Will it be possible to develop, deploy, and use nanoweapons in warfare without rendering humanity extinct?
Nantucket Slayrides: Three Short Novels
by Lucius ShepardNantucket Slayrides contains the two short novels "How the Wind Spoke at Madaket" and "Nomans Land" by Shepard and Robert Frazier's "The Summer People".
Napalm: An American Biography
by Robert M. NeerNapalm, incendiary gel that sticks to skin and burns to the bone, came into the world on Valentine's Day 1942 at a secret Harvard war research laboratory. On March 9, 1945, it created an inferno that killed over 87,500 people in Tokyo-more than died in the atomic explosions at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It went on to incinerate sixty-four of Japan's largest cities. The Bomb got the press, but napalm did the work. After World War II, the incendiary held the line against communism in Greece and Korea-Napalm Day led the 1950 counter-attack from Inchon-and fought elsewhere under many flags. Americans generally applauded, until the Vietnam War. Today, napalm lives on as a pariah: a symbol of American cruelty and the misguided use of power, according to anti-war protesters in the 1960s and popular culture from Apocalypse Now to the punk band Napalm Death and British street artist Banksy. Its use by Serbia in 1994 and by the United States in Iraq in 2003 drew condemnation. United Nations delegates judged deployment against concentrations of civilians a war crime in 1980. After thirty-one years, America joined the global consensus, in 2011. Robert Neer has written the first history of napalm, from its inaugural test on the Harvard College soccer field, to a Marine Corps plan to attack Japan with millions of bats armed with tiny napalm time bombs, to the reflections of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a girl who knew firsthand about its power and its morality.
Napalm Dreams: A Men Of Valor Novel (The Men of Valor Novels #1)
by John F. MullinsA shattering novel of courage, heroism, and unbreakable bonds forged in the heat of battle. Green Beret Captain Finn McCulloden and his troops are having a very bad day -- even by the nightmarish standards of Vietnam. They've just been dropped into a meat grinder with orders to reinforce a Special Forces border camp that's about to be overrun by the North Vietnamese. Outnumbered twenty-to-one, beset by treachery from within, and saddled with an incompetent second-in-command, McCulloden knows that all hell is about to break loose. Through one brutal day and night McCulloden and his men fight alongside their native Montagnard allies in a pitched battle of blood and guts against an unwavering foe who never stops coming. The Green Berets can neither give up nor give in, and all will become heroes in the truest sense of the word. But one extraordinary soldier man rises above them all in an ultimate act of valor....
Naples '44
by Norman LewisAs a young intelligence officer stationed in Naples following its liberation from Nazi forces, Norman Lewis recorded the lives of a proud and vibrant people forced to survive on prostitution, thievery, and a desperate belief in miracles and cures. The most popular of Lewis's twenty-seven books, Naples '44 is a landmark poetic study of the agony of wartime occupation and its ability to bring out the worst, and often the best, in human nature. In prose both heartrending and comic, Lewis describes an era of disillusionment, escapism, and hysteria in which the Allied occupiers mete out justice unfairly and fail to provide basic necessities to the populace while Neapolitan citizens accuse each other of being Nazi spies, women offer their bodies to the same Allied soldiers whose supplies they steal for sale on the black market, and angry young men organize militias to oppose "temporary" foreign rule. Yet over the chaotic din, Lewis sings intimately of the essential dignity of the Neapolitan people, whose traditions of civility, courage, and generosity of spirit shine through daily. This essential World War II book is as timely a read as ever.
Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy (Isis Large Print Ser.)
by Norman LewisThe classic memoir of the Italian city left in chaos by the Nazis is &“[a] masterpiece . . . elegiac and furious, and frequently hilarious&” (The New York Times). &“Vivid, lucid, elegant, often funny,&” Naples &’44 is the starkly human account of the true cost of war as seen through the eyes of a young, untested man who would never again look at his world the same way (The New York Times Book Review). With his gift for linguistics, Norman Lewis was assigned to the British Intelligence Corps&’ Field Security Service, tasked with reforming civil services, dealing with local leaders, and keeping the peace in places World War II had devastated. After a near-disastrous Allied landing at Salerno, Italy, Lewis was stationed in the newly liberated city of Naples. But bringing the city back to life was unlike anything he had been prepared for. Much of the populace was far from grateful, stealing anything they could, not only from each other but also from those sent to help them. Local vendettas and endless feuds made discerning friend from Nazi collaborator practically impossible, and turned attempts at meting out justice into a farce. And as the deprivations grew ever harsher, a proud and vibrant people were forced to survive on a diet of prostitution, corruption, and a desperate belief in miracles, cures, and saviors. But even through the darkness and chaos, Lewis evokes the essential dignity of the Neapolitan people, their traditions of civility, courage, and generosity of spirit, and the indefatigable pride that kept them fighting for life during the greatest calamity in human history. Praised by Graham Greene as &“one of the best writers . . . of our century,&” Norman Lewis presents a portrait of Naples that is a &“lyrical, ironic and detached account of the tempestuous, byzantine and opaque city in the aftermath of war&” (Will Self). His Naples &’44 &“reads like prose . . . sings like poetry&” (The Plain Dealer).
Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire: 1811-1821
by Michael BroersAn accomplished Oxford scholar delivers a dynamic new history covering the last chapter of the emperor's life—from his defeat in Russia and the drama of Waterloo to his final exile—as the world Napoleon has created begins to crumble around him.In 1811, Napoleon stood at his zenith. He had defeated all his continental rivals, come to an entente with Russia, and his blockade of Britain seemed, at long last, to be a success. The emperor had an heir on the way with his new wife, Marie-Louise, the young daughter of the Emperor of Austria. His personal life, too, was calm and secure for the first time in many years. It was a moment of unprecedented peace and hope, built on the foundations of emphatic military victories. But in less than two years, all of this was in peril. In four years, it was gone, swept away by the tides of war against the most powerful alliance in European history. The rest of his life was passed on a barren island. This is not a story any novelist could create; it is reality as epic. Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire traces this story through the dramatic narrative of the years 1811-1821 and explores the ever-bloodier conflicts, the disintegration and reforging of the bonds among the Bonaparte family, and the serpentine diplomacy that shaped the fate of Europe. At the heart of the story is Napoleon&’s own sense of history, the tensions in his own character, and the shared vision of a family dynasty to rule Europe. Drawing on the remarkable resource of the new edition of Napoleon&’s personal correspondence produced by the Fondation Napoleon in Paris, Michael Broers dynamic new history follows Napoleon&’s thoughts and feelings, his hopes and ambitions, as he fought to preserve the world he had created. Much of this turns on his relationship with Tsar Alexander of Russia, in so many respects his alter ego, and eventual nemesis. His inability to understand this complex man, the only person with the power to destroy him, is key to tracing the roots of his disastrous decision to invade Russia—and his inability to face diplomatic and military reality thereafter. Even his defeat in Russia was not the end. The last years of the Napoleonic Empire reveal its innate strength, but it now faced hopeless odds. The last phase of the Napoleonic Wars saw the convergence of the most powerful of forces in European history to date: Russian manpower and British money. The sheer determination of Tsar Alexander and the British to bring Napoleon down is a story of compromise and sacrifice. The horrors and heroism of war are omnipresent in these years, from Lisbon to Moscow, in the life of the common solider. The core of this new book reveals how these men pushed Napoleon back from Moscow to St Helena. Among this generation, there was no more remarkable persona than Napoleon. His defeat forged his myth—as well as his living tomb on St Helena. The audacious enterprise of the 100 Days, reaching its crescendo at the Battle of Waterloo, marked the spectacular end of an unprecedented public life. From the ruins of a life—and an empire—came a new continent and a legend that haunts Europe still.
Napoleon: The Final Verdict (Praeger Illustrated Military History Ser. #20)
by David ChandlerThe acclaimed historian and author of The Campaigns of Napoleon presents his classic biography of the 19th century French Emperor and military leader. Born on the island of Corsica in 1769, Napoleon Bonaparte entered L&’Ecole Militaire in Paris at the age of fifteen. He supported the French Revolution and began to distinguish himself as a soldier at the Siege of Toulon. After a phenomenal rise to power through the military machine, Napoleon became the de facto ruler of France by the age of thirty. A widely celebrated historian of the Napoleonic Era, David Chandler chronicles the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, capturing one of history&’s greatest military minds in a lively and dramatic narrative. Chandler traces Napoleon&’s development as a military commander through the hard-fought battles at Marengo, Austerlitz, Jeana-Auerstadt, Friedland, the Peninsular War, the Russian campaign, and his final defeat at Waterloo.
Napoleon: Ascent to Power
by Charles EsdaileA panoramic chronicle of Napoleon Bonaparte's rise to power--excerpted from celebrated historian Charles Esdaile's masterwork Napoleon's Wars Napoleon's Wars offers a definitive account of the violent conflicts that seethed within Europe from the end of the Peace of Amiens in 1803 to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, recognizing not only the role of Napoleon himself, but also of the larger forces at play during this tumultuous era. In this excerpt, acclaimed historian Charles Esdaile chronicles the shifting European alliances and simmering enmities in the closing years of the 18th century and follows the rise of young Napoleon from misfit schoolboy to the conquering hero of France. Stripping away myth and fabrication to lay bare the future ruler of the French Empire's vainglorious nature and obsessive lust for power, Esdaile reveals the young Corsican as a master manipulator, who time and again bends political tensions, cultural conflict, and military strategy toward his own aims. A selection from the work the Economist has called "explanatory history of high order," Napoleon: Ascent to Power offers a wide-ranging explanation of the circumstances that led the countries of Europe to fight each other so ferociously for so long, and a portrait of the man who pushed the conflict to new heights of devastation.
Napoleon: Life, Legacy, And Image - A Biography
by Alan ForrestOn a cold December day in 1840 Parisians turned out in force to watch as Napoleon's coffin was solemnly borne down the Champs-Elysées on its final journey to the Invalides. The return of the Emperor's body from the island of St Helena, nearly twenty years after his death, was a moment they had eagerly awaited, though there were many who feared that the memories stirred would only further destabilize a country that had struggled for order and direction since 'the little corporal' was sent into exile after Waterloo.Alan Forrest tells the remarkable story of how the son of a Corsican attorney became the most powerful man in Europe, a man whose political legacy endured long after his lonely death many thousands of miles from France. Along the way, he cuts away the layers of myth and counter-myth that have grown up around Napoleon, a man who mixed history and legend promiscuously, and shows how he was as much a product of his times as he was their creator.The convulsive effect of the Revolution on French society, and the new meritocracy it ushered in, afforded men of this generation opportunities that were unimaginable under the Ancien Régime. Napoleon seized every chance that was offered him, making full use of his undoubted abilities and charismatic presence. But the Empire he created, stretching across most of the European continent, was not the work of one man. It was a collective enterprise that depended on the work and vision of thousands of administrators, army officers, jurists and educators, and The Age of Napoleon is as much their story as his.In a book that takes in everything from Napoleon's ill-fated expedition to Egypt to the festivals that punctuated the Imperial calendar, Alan Forrest draws on original research and recent scholarship to draw a fresh and compelling picture of one of the most dramatic periods in the history of Europe.
Napoleon: Master of Europe
by Sir Alistair Horne CBEThe definitve account of Napoleon's rise to power by one of our greatest historians.On June 25, 1807, Napoleon met and embraced his recent foe, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, on a raft in the middle of the River Niemen near Tilsit. This theatrical but historic occasion represented the pinnacle of Napoleon's glory. The Tsar was forced to accept an alliance dividing Europe into two spheres of influence, and Napoleon became supreme ruler of the continent of Europe west of Russia.Alistair Horne traces Napoleon's ascent to power in the years preceding this climax to his political and military career: the success of the "peace machine," the formation of the impressive Grande Armee and the abortive plan to invade England. The author examines in detail the strategic success of the Ulm-Austerlitz campaign in 1805 - "the first great battle of modern history" - in which Napoleon decisively defeated the Austro-Russian army. With the ensuing double victory of Jena-Auerstadt in 1806 and the defeat of the Prussians, Napoleon became undisputed master of Central Europe. In 1807, the Battle of Eylau, resulting in a draw - after which he admitted that his "soul was oppressed to see so many victims" - led to his crushing victory at Friedland which set the seal on the campaigns begun two years previously.
Napoleon: A Life
by Paul JohnsonFrom New York Times bestselling author Paul Johnson, "a very readable and entertaining biography" (The Washington Post) about one of the most important figures in modern European history: Napoleon Bonaparte In an ideal pairing of author and subject, the magisterial historian Paul Johnson offers a vivid look at the life of the strategist, general, and dictator who conquered much of Europe. Following Napoleon from the barren island of Corsica to his early training in Paris, from his meteoric victories and military dictatorship to his exile and death, Johnson examines the origins of his ferocious ambition. In Napoleon's quest for power, Johnson sees a realist unfettered by patriotism or ideology. And he recognizes Bonaparte's violent legacy in the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Napoleon is a magnificent work that bears witness to one individual's ability to work his will on history.
Napoleon
by Paul JohnsonFrom New York Times bestselling author Paul Johnson, "a very readable and entertaining biography" (The Washington Post) about one of the most important figures in modern European history: Napoleon Bonaparte In an ideal pairing of author and subject, the magisterial historian Paul Johnson offers a vivid look at the life of the strategist, general, and dictator who conquered much of Europe. Following Napoleon from the barren island of Corsica to his early training in Paris, from his meteoric victories and military dictatorship to his exile and death, Johnson examines the origins of his ferocious ambition. In Napoleon's quest for power, Johnson sees a realist unfettered by patriotism or ideology. And he recognizes Bonaparte's violent legacy in the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Napoleon is a magnificent work that bears witness to one individual's ability to work his will on history.
Napoleon (Mentor Ser.)
by Felix MarkhamNAPOLEON--SOLDIER, EMPEROR, LOVER...This magnificent reconstruction of Napoleon's life and legend is written by a distinguished Oxford scholar. It is based on newly discovered documents--including the personal letters of Marie-Louise and the decoded diaries of General Bertrand, who accompanied Napoleon to his final exile on St. Helena. It has been hailed as the most important single-volume work in Napoleonic literature."Mr. Markham's book is notable...a well-balanced study of a man vastly bigger than his 5 feet 6 inches, who has been for generations one of the most fascinating of subjects for biography."--Mark S. Watson, Baltimore Evening Sun"A surprisingly sympathetic biography of one of the most fascinating men who ever strutted across the stage of history."--Dolph Honicker, Nashville Tennesseean"A remarkable achievement. The story moves as fast as one of Bonaparte's campaigns and is told with the clarity of his dispatches."--The Economist"A definitive contribution to Napoleonic literature."--Jose Sanchez, St. Louis Globe Democrat"The university lecturer in History at Oxford has approached the impossible; he has written a new life of one of the most written-about figures in modern history with freshness, vivacity, fine scholarship and penetration."--James H. Powers, Boston Globe"Markham has achieved a startlingly vivid and coherent picture of Napoleon's career, of the social and intellectual influences that molded it, and of the men and forces that opposed it. The military events, the political movements, the personal intrigues--all appear, each in its proper place and perspective."--E. Nelson Hayes, Los Angeles Times"Markham's erudition is extensive; he makes full use of recent discoveries of manuscript material, and he writes with admirable judgment about a character who has been misjudged consistently by historians."--J. H. Plumb, The Saturday Review
Napoleon: A Life
by Andrew RobertsThe definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of The Storm of War--winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and the Grand Prix of the Fondation Napoleon Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times. Andrew Roberts's Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon's thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century. An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon's sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.From the Hardcover edition.
Napoleon: A Life Told In Gardens And Shadows
by Ruth ScurrMarking the 200th anniversary of his death, Napoleon is an unprecedented portrait of the emperor told through his engagement with the natural world. “How should one envisage this subject? With a great pomp of words, or with simplicity?” —Charlotte Brontë, “The Death of Napoleon” The most celebrated general in history, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) has for centuries attracted eminent male writers. Since Thomas Carlyle first christened him “our last Great Man,” regiments of biographers have marched across the same territory, weighing campaigns and conflicts, military tactics and power politics. Yet in all this time, no definitive portrait of Napoleon has endured, and a mere handful of women have written his biography—a fact that surely would have pleased him. With Napoleon, Ruth Scurr, one of our most eloquent and original historians, emphatically rejects the shibboleth of the “Great Man” theory of history, instead following the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon’s life through gardens, parks, and forests. As Scurr reveals, gardening was the first and last love of Napoleon, offering him a retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Gardens were, at the same time, a mirror image to the battlefields on which he fought, discrete settings in which terrain and weather were as important as they were in combat, but for creative rather than destructive purposes. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary and historical scholarship, and taking us from his early days at the military school in Brienne-le-Château through his canny seizure of power and eventual exile, Napoleon frames the general’s story through the green spaces he cultivated. Amid Corsican olive groves, ornate menageries in Paris, and lone garden plots on the island of Saint Helena, Scurr introduces a diverse cast of scientists, architects, family members, and gardeners, all of whom stood in the shadows of Napoleon’s meteoric rise and fall. Building a cumulative panorama, she offers indelible portraits of Augustin Bon Joseph de Robespierre, the younger brother of Maximilien Robespierre, who used his position to advance Napoleon’s career; Marianne Peusol, the fourteen-year-old girl manipulated into a Christmas-Eve assassination attempt on Napoleon that resulted in her death; and Emmanuel, comte de Las Cases, the atlas maker to whom Napoleon dictated his memoirs. As Scurr contends, Napoleon’s dealings with these people offer unusual and unguarded opportunities to see how he grafted a new empire onto the remnants of the ancien régime and the French Revolution. Epic in scale and novelistic in its detail, Napoleon, with stunning illustrations, is a work of revelatory range and depth, revealing the contours of the general’s personality and power as no conventional biography can.
Napoleón: Fragments (classic Reprint) (El\libro Aguilar Ser.)
by StendhalConmemoramos los 250 años del nacimiento de Napoleón con esta biografía escrita de la mano de un testimonio excepcional, Stendhal. «Se trata, en efecto, del hombre más grande aparecido en el mundo desde César.» Este volumen reúne los dos intentos de Stendhal de escribir la biografía de Napoleón. Durante años se dedicó a reunir el material necesario para llevar a cabo este gran proyecto pero no llegó a terminarlo. Empezó a escribir Vida de Napoleón en 1817 cuando, a pesar de que Bonaparte ya se encontraba en el exilio, Stendhal todavía creía en su empresa. En esta primera biografía se centra en sus hazañas militares y en su experiencia como combatiente en las guerras napoleónicas. En Memorias de Napoleón, escritas en 1832, desengañado por una Francia que parecía haber olvidado el canto a la libertad, se centra en el símbolo que supuso el personaje y no duda en afirmar que aborrece al tirano pero adora poéticamente su grandeza. La presente edición incluye una magnífica introducción de Ignacio Echevarría que nos acerca a la intimidad histórica con la que Stendhal dibuja el retrato de Napoleón. El texto ha sido vertido al español por Consuelo Bergés, reconocida experta en Stendhal y traductora de la obra completa.
Napoleon: A Life
by Adam ZamoyskiThe definitive biography of Napoleon, revealing the true man behind the legend"What a novel my life has been!" Napoleon once said of himself. Born into a poor family, the callow young man was, by twenty-six, an army general. Seduced by an older woman, his marriage transformed him into a galvanizing military commander. The Pope crowned him as Emperor of the French when he was only thirty-five. Within a few years, he became the effective master of Europe, his power unparalleled in modern history. His downfall was no less dramatic.The story of Napoleon has been written many times. In some versions, he is a military genius, in others a war-obsessed tyrant. Here, historian Adam Zamoyski cuts through the mythology and explains Napoleon against the background of the European Enlightenment, and what he was himself seeking to achieve. This most famous of men is also the most hidden of men, and Zamoyski dives deeper than any previous biographer to find him. Beautifully written, Napoleon brilliantly sets the man in his European context.
Napoleon and British Song, 1797-1822 (War, Culture and Society, 1750 –1850)
by Oskar Cox JensenThis study offers a radical reassessment of a crucial period of political and cultural history. By looking at some 400 songs, many of which are made available to hear, and at their writers, singers, and audiences, it questions both our relationship with song, and ordinary Britons' relationship with Napoleon, the war, and the idea of Britain itself.
Napoleon and de Gaulle: Heroes and History
by Patrice GueniffeyOne of France’s most famous historians compares two exemplars of political and military leadership to make the unfashionable case that individuals, for better and worse, matter in history. Historians have taught us that the past is not just a tale of heroes and wars. The anonymous millions matter and are active agents of change. But in democratizing history, we have lost track of the outsized role that individual will and charisma can play in shaping the world, especially in moments of extreme tumult. Patrice Gueniffey provides a compelling reminder in this powerful dual biography of two transformative leaders, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle. Both became national figures at times of crisis and war. They were hailed as saviors and were eager to embrace the label. They were also animated by quests for personal and national greatness, by the desire to raise France above itself and lead it on a mission to enlighten the world. Both united an embattled nation, returned it to dignity, and left a permanent political legacy—in Napoleon’s case, a form of administration and a body of civil law; in de Gaulle’s case, new political institutions. Gueniffey compares Napoleon’s and de Gaulle’s journeys to power; their methods; their ideas and writings, notably about war; and their postmortem reputations. He also contrasts their weaknesses: Napoleon’s limitless ambitions and appetite for war and de Gaulle’s capacity for cruelty, manifested most clearly in Algeria. They were men of genuine talent and achievement, with flaws almost as pronounced as their strengths. As many nations, not least France, struggle to find their soul in a rapidly changing world, Gueniffey shows us what a difference an extraordinary leader can make.
Napoleon and Doctor Verling on St Helena
by J. David MarkhamMany books have been written about St Helena and its most famous resident, the exiled Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The episode has been so intensively researched that it is rare for a fresh, unpublished account to come to light. Yet Dr James Verling's St Helena journal is just such a source. Verling was based on St Helena during Napoleon's imprisonment and he was even appointed as Napoleon's official physician. Throughout his stay, this young doctor kept a vivid diary of his experiences. Through Verling's eyes we get a fresh view of daily life on the island and of the suspicion-filled society that grew up around Napoleon during his last years.
Napoleon and Grouchy: The Last Great Waterloo Mystery Unravelled
by Paul L. DawsonOne of the enduring controversies of the Waterloo campaign is the conduct of Marshal Grouchy. Given command of a third of Napoleons army and told to keep the Prussians from joining forces with Wellington, he failed to keep Wellington and Blcher apart with the result that Napoleon was overwhelmed at Waterloo. Grouchy, though, was not defeated. He kept his force together and retreated in good order back to France.Many have accused Grouchy of intentionally holding back his men and not marching to join Napoleon when the sound of the gunfire at Waterloo could clearly be heard, and he has been widely blamed for Napoleons defeat.Now, for the first time, Grouchys conduct during the Waterloo campaign is analyzed in fine detail, drawing principally on French sources not previously available in English. The author, for example, answers questions such as whether key orders did actually exist in 1815 or were they later fabrications to make Grouchy the scapegoat for Napoleons failures? Did General Grard really tell Grouchy to march to the sound of the guns? Why did Grouchy appear to move so slowly when speed was essential?This is a subject which is generally overlooked by British historians, who tend to concentrate on the actions of Wellington and Napoleon, and which French historians choose not to look at too closely for fear that it might reflect badly upon their hero Napoleon.Despite the mass of books written on Waterloo, this is a genuinely unique contribution to this most famous campaign. This book is certain to fuel debate and prompt historians to reconsider the events of June 1815.