![]() ![]() ![]() To McLynn the difference is that Napoleon's dreams were truly Alexandrine-that "His genius was of a kind that needed constant warfare to fuel it and. ![]() Indifferent to people except as he needed their loyalty, this Napoleon's embodies ambitions not tempered by any idealism, and McLynn dismisses "credulous" previous biographers for seeing anything in him beyond a familiar French grasping for "grandeur" and "glory," apparent on a lesser level from Louis XIV to de Gaulle. ![]() No hagiographer, McLynn is hard on Napoleon both as general and as statesman, and faults his failures to rein in his openly "venal" marshals, treacherous administrative elite and astonishingly rapacious siblings. McLynn's study-but for his addictions to cliché and to repetition, and his labored leaning on both Freud and Jung-is one the best of the new breed (since the 1978 discovery of Bonaparte's arsenic poisoning made earlier volumes obsolete). This latest, by British historian and Strathclyde University (U.K.) literature professor McLynn ( Villa and Zapata The Jacobites), is a crowded and persuasive one-volume life. Born there in 1769, Napoleon Bonaparte would convulse the Continent, precipitating thousands of books about him since. After visiting Corsica, Rousseau declared, "I have a presentiment that one day this small island will astonish Europe." Corsica did. ![]()
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