USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Robert B. Asprey

FROM THE COVER: Napoleon Bonaparte has been too often remembered as either demi-god or devil incarnate. In The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, the first volume of a two-volume cradle-to-grave biography, Robert Asprey instead treats him as a human being Asprey tells this fascinating, tragic tale in lush narrative detail, charting the exciting, reckless thrill ride of Napoleon's vertiginous ascent to fame and the height of power. Here is Napoleon as he was--not saint, nor sinner, but a man devoured by his vision of himself, his empire and his world. "This work's great service is showing by a clear presentation of the facts just why Napolcon Bonaparte has been such an enduring figure of fascination for most of two centuries. When complete, Asprey's biography bids fair to become the standard work in English on the most prominent avatar of the great man' theory of history. -Boston Globe

NY. Basic Books. 2000. 604p.

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Robert B. Asprey

FROM THE COVER: “This second volume of Robert Asprey's biography of Napoleon completes his monumental study of one of history's most enigmatic, complex and fascinating figures. The Reign of Napoleon Bonaparte chronicles Napoleon's chilling, reckless reign and fall from power. This swift-moving, dramatic volume opens where The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte left off, at Napoleon's astounding victory at Austerlitz in 1805, charting his life from the zenith of his power to his lonely, exile's deach sixteen years later on the island of Saint Helena. "Accessible, fast-moving narrative."-Publishers Weekly

NY. Basic Books. 2001. 509p.

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAION MARK-UP

By David Howarth

FROM THE JACKET: “A great many books have been written about the Battle of Waterloo but none quite like this; the reader can feel the shock of battle almost as if he were there. The first shots were fired at about 11:30 on a Sunday morning in June 1815. By 9:00 that night, 40,000 men and 10,000 horses lay dead or wounded among theBelgian grainfields,and Napoleon had fled, abandoning his army and al hope of recovering his empire-and also, it was said, a fortune in diamonds sewn into the lining of his uniform. This is the story of the men who were there. From their recollections, David Howarth has re-created the battle as it appeared to them on the day it was fought-what they saw and heard, the little that they knew of what was happening, and, above all, what they felt. The book follows the fortunes of men of al ranks on both sides-and some women too…”

New York. Atheneum. 1968. 249p.

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Stephen E. Ambrose

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “On the nation's twenty-seventh birthday, July 4, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson proclaimed, in the pages of the Washington, D.C., National Intelligencer, that the United States had just purchased from Napoleon "Louisiana." It was not only New Orleans, but all the country drained from the west by the Mississippi River, most especially all the Missouri River drainage. That was 825,000 square miles, doubling the size of the country for a price of about fifteen million dollars the best land bargain ever made. That same July 4, the president gave to Meriwether Lewis a letter authorizing him to draw on any agency of the U.S. government anywhere in the world anything he wanted for an exploring expedition to the Pacific Ocean. He also authorized Lewis to call on "citizens of any nation to furnish you with those supplies which your necessities may call for" and signed "this letter of general credit for you with my own hand," thus pledging the faith of the United States government. This must be the most unlimited letter of credit ever issued by an American president. The next day, July 5, 1803, Lewis set off. His purpose was to look for an all water route across the western two-thirds of the continent, and to discover and describe what Jefferson had bought from Napoleon.”

NY. Simon & Schuster. 2003. 526p.

By David Howarth

From the opening passage: “At ten to six in the morning of the 21st of October 1805, off Cape Trafalgar in the south of Spain, Napoleon's French and Spanish fleet was sighted against the dawn sky, and men in the British fleet who were not on watch swarmed up on deck to look.

It was a beautiful autumn morning, clear under a hazy sky, with a breeze from the west-north-west so light that the sea was scarcely ruffled. The British ships, in line ahead, were sailing slowly north, and rolling in a long Atlantic swell. Some had names that were famous already, and some became famous that day: Victory, Royal Sovereign, Temeraire, Dread- nought, Revenge, Colossus, Ajax, Euryalus, Bellerophon - twenty-seven sail of the line in al, and four frigates. But they were a sight so familiar that nobody spared them a glance, except the officers of the watch on each of the quarterdecks, whose duty was to keep their own ship in station. Everyone else watched the lightening horizon. For more than two years of tedious patrol, summer and winter, blockading Napoleon's ports, the horizon at every dawn had been empty. Now, in eager anticipation, they counted the distant enemy sail: twenty, twenty-five, thirty - thirty-three of them, and frigates among them, a column five miles long, standing south for the Strait of Gibraltar.

There were seventeen thousand men in the British fleet….”

London. Collins. 1969. 165p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP.