Schom's one-volume life of Napoleon includes all facets of Napoleon's incredible career, from his childhood in Corsica to his death in exile on the island of St. Helena. It follows his many military campaigns and describes the great battles he won and lost from northern Italy to Egypt, Spain, Prussia, Austria, Poland, and Russia, to his final defeat at Waterloo.

It illuminates his extensive political and structural reorganization of the French government; explores his relationships with his wives - the legendary Josephine and her replacement, Marie-Louise - and some of his mistresses; and chronicles his feuds with his tempestuous family and both loyal and mutinous officials. Key aides, ministers, generals, and naval commanders - from Talleyrand and Police Minister Fouche to Marshals Ney, Davout, and Lannes, Admiral Villeneuve, and many more - are fully portrayed and given their due.

International rivalries and diplomatic negotiations are also thoroughly covered, and Napoleon's many opponents and enemies - including Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, Emperor Franz I of Austria, Czar Alexander I of Russia, and Field Marshals Kutuzov, Blucher, and the Duke of Wellington - are brought vividly to life.

There are intriguing fresh insights here, too; among them an examination of Napoleon's little-known friendship with a leading mathematician and savant, and of the cause of his death on St. Helena. Unique in Napoleonic literature, even that by French authors, is Schom's candor about Napoleon's character flaws.

Nor does he gloss over the awful misery and destruction that Napoleon's endless, often needless wars of conquest wreaked on the peoples of Europe, his indifference to the medical needs of his own soldiers, or the surprisingly frequent examples of his poor planning and intelligence gathering.