Napoleon by Andrew Roberts

Napoleon: A Life by acclaimed historian Andrew Roberts is widely considered the definitive, single-volume biography of the legendary French emperor. Roberts fundamentally reshapes our understanding of Bonaparte by drawing on 33,000 recently published personal letters and physically visiting 53 of Napoleon’s 60 battlefields. Rather than portraying him merely as a ruthless warmonger, the book presents a deeply nuanced portrait of a master multitasker, legal reformer, and "Enlightenment on horseback" who modernized European education, administration, and law via the Napoleonic Code. From his meteoric rise as a Corsican outsider and artillery captain to his sweeping European conquests, tumultuous relationship with Josephine, fatal invasions of Russia, and final exile on St. Helena, Roberts captures both the sheer intellectual dynamism and the fatal misjudgments of one of history's greatest soldier-statesmen.