Napoleon: The Path to Power | 
 enlarge | Author: Philip Dwyer
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  53 reviews
Sales Rank: 77478
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 672
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.9
ISBN: 0300137540
Dewey Decimal Number: 944.05092
EAN: 9780300137545
ASIN: 0300137540
Publication Date: March 27, 2008
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Product Description
At just thirty years of age, Napoleon Bonaparte ruled the most powerful country in Europe. But the journey that led him there was neither inevitable nor smooth. This authoritative biography focuses on the evolution of Napoleon as a leader and debunks many of the myths that are often repeated about him—sensational myths often propagated by Napoleon himself. Here, Philip Dwyer sheds new light on Napoleon’s inner life—especially his darker side and his passions—to reveal a ruthless, manipulative, driven man whose character has been disguised by the public image he carefully fashioned to suit the purposes of his ambition. Dwyer focuses acutely on Napoleon’s formative years, from his Corsican origins to his French education, from his melancholy youth to his flirtation with radicals of the French Revolution, from his first military campaigns in Italy and Egypt to the political-military coup that brought him to power in 1799. One of the first truly modern politicians, Napoleon was a master of “spin,” using the media to project an idealized image of himself. Dwyer’s biography of the young Napoleon provides a fascinating new perspective on one of the great figures of modern history.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 48 more reviews...
Astute Opportunism: Bonaparte's Marching Order for Supreme Command August 4, 2008
In "Napoleon: The Path To Power," Philip Dwyer successfully brings to life the first three decades in the existence of Napoleon Bonaparte. Readers who have a pre-existing knowledge of Bonaparte and his time will be the ones who will benefit the most from reading Dwyer's book. To his credit, Dwyer neither glorifies nor demonizes Bonaparte.
Dwyer clearly explores the contradictions in the character of Bonaparte. Bonaparte started as a Corsican nationalist, then morphed into a servant of the French Revolution, and ended up as an imperialist who became supremely confident in his own personal destiny. Bonaparte transformed himself into what he has been remembered for because of his unmatched exploitation of the opportunities that he saw before him. Dwyer also shows with much conviction the active role that Bonaparte played in his own mythmaking.
Although Bonaparte was talented, intelligent, and passionate, he was also a ruthless man. Bonaparte regarded people as pawns in his political and military calculations, to get rid of if they could no longer be useful. As Dwyer observes with much pertinence, that callousness towards the lives of others is not unusual in the character of a leading public personality. The more power a public figure amasses, the greater the indifference he / she will often display.
To summarize, "Napoleon: The Path To Power" is a nice addition to the library of any person fond of history.
 A Path Lost in Meanderings June 19, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a book for the serious Buonapartiste - particularly his secret detractors. The Sorbonne-educated historian has given us PART ONE of his work - a work of over 600 pages - and I found the deluge of historical materials to be both overwhelming and deftly handled, the resolution to this paradox being that Dwyer is guilty of what he demonstrates behind Napoleon's ascent: a clumsy spin doctoring of the "facts."
This also is the reason I find fault with the very conception of the book: we long have reconciled ourselves to remaining trapped within the vortices of history, myth, and cultural creationism when it comes to this particular biographical subject. Unable to break the historian's taboo of psychoanalytic consideration of its subject, this book ultimately is a doomed enterprise as yet another attempt at "understanding" the man.
I wait for the biography that tells us something new about how the man's context, the history/myth/culture that he found himself in, struggled against, and, in this case, to great extent, found itself transformed in his wake. Our obsession with the little giant certainly would favor this approach.
Peter Glidden, Ph.D.
 Disappointing May 31, 2008
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
This biography is dry as dust. All the principle individuals are two dimensional. The writer writes as if they were stick figures rather than real people who influenced the course of history. His protrait of Napoleon is without flesh and blood.
A Bloodless Coup May 23, 2008
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
Napoleon's military brilliance, his ruthless domination of both his army and France's conquered territories - such as in his Egyptian campaign - and his intuitive grasp of nation building through nation invading, is a fascinating story and author Philip Dwyer writes a gripping tale of Napoleon's strategic and tactical military conquests.
Yet, for this very reason, Dwyer's "Napoleon: Path to Power" reads more like "Napoleon: March to Victory" as the book is less a political biography as it is a military history. With its interesting battle and territory maps, as well as art and captions, I felt this book earned a 4-star rating.
Dwyer clearly establishes Napoleon's early influences as a youth on Corsica and at a boarding school in France, where he learns - sometimes at great expense - that the battlefront is a means to the end in the battleground of ideas. As a young adult, he uses his army abroad to build a constituency back home in France. He shamelessly manipulated his soldiers, the press, his family and friends and even his countrymen to achieve his real ambitions of political domination.
If Dwyer had followed that narrative, this book may have been a more compelling story. Napoleon wasn't a general who somehow became a politician; he was a politician who became a general so he could become an even bigger politician.
The proof of which is that Napoleon's greatest victory isn't even on the battlefield; it's a bloodless coup d'etat in 1799 over the corrupt and ineffective French Directory (his superiors) - the post-Revolutionary constitutional government. He was 30-years old and First Counsel of an emerging European power.
 Textbook Style May 16, 2008
3 out of 13 found this review helpful
I tried to read it. I really did. It's one of my favorite subjects. I so far got through maybe 100 pages. I haven't given up, but nor would I take it on vacation. Perhaps if I were stuck in an elevator, alone with nothing to do and nothting else to read, I'd sit down and complete another 100 pages.
Well, after trying the phone, pounding on the walls, and trying to jump up to the ceiling to exit through one of those hidden doors and shimmying up the greased cables to a door and trying to pry it open. Failing that, I may just be inclined to read more of the book.
But then again, why would I have it with me?
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