Napoleon: A Life - Hardcover

Adam Zamoyski is the author of numerous books about Polish and European history, and has written for publications including the Times (London), the Times Literary Supplement, and the Guardian. He lives in London and Poland.

"It is the outstanding merit of Adam Zamoyski's fine new biography, Napoleon: A Life, that he insists on treating his subject as neither a superman nor a monster, but as a creature of his troubled age...Zamoyski gives us...a vivid sense of Napoleon as a protean chancer, outwardly self-confident as any man who ever lived, inwardly always wondering when his 'star' would finally set."―New York Review of Books

"Zamoyski...attempts to cut through the fantasy and retrospective exaggeration to tell the story of an extraordinary, but certainly not superhuman life.... Napoleon emerges from Mr. Zamoyski's book a willful, self-made opportunist...gifted, energetic, brave, lucky, but also a bit ridiculous."―Wall Street Journal

"Magnificent...Napoleon was neither demon nor deity. He was a man, with great talents and great flaws, often intertwined...[Mr. Zamoyski] writes beautifully."―Economist

"Zamoyski tells the personal side of Napoleon's life...his hopes, his dreams, his self-doubts."―New York Journal of Books

"Zamoyski's book is one of the finest biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte ever written."―MHQ: Quarterly Journal of Military History

"A lifetime's diligent research and profound thinking about Napoleon and his times has gone into this hugely readable, highly enjoyable and well-balanced biography. Zamoyski is at the top of his game as a biographer."―Andrew Roberts, Visiting Professor, Department of War Studies, King's College, London

"A biography of Napoleon Bonaparte that avoids the well-established military details and gives us the story of a singular man...Illuminating."―Kirkus

"Engaging and highly readable.... An inclusive life of a historical dynamo."―Washington Times

"Adam Zamoyski's 700-plus-page but very readable Napoleon: A Life...shows how France's tired post-revolutionary leaders in 1796 recognized they were riding a tiger---but didn't expect him to eat them."―World Magazine

"A superb history of a complicated man and time."―Choice