Napoleon - The Great (A Life) - Andrew Roberts Audiobook

Written by Andrew Roberts
Read by JohnLee
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Books on Tape/Penguin Random House
Release date: November 4, 2014
Duration: 32:55:58

The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman.

Published under the subtitles A Life and The Great. …64k, chaptered and tagged.

Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times.

Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century.

An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, and beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.

The pleasures of Roberts’s big, richly detailed biography of the great French conqueror are enhanced in this outstanding audiobook production. John Lee is a steady and agreeable narrator, and a good choice for a work this long. Based on the recent full publication of the 33,000 letters Napoleon wrote in his lifetime, the narrative offers a close-up and largely sympathetic view of one of history’s most interesting, accomplished, and–yes–likable personalities. Lee maintains the fine balance between intimacy and perspective, as well as between Napoleon’s current and former reputation, to make this one of the stellar histories and audiobook adaptations.