Napoleon: The Path to Power 1769 - 1799 by Philip Dwyer

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  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Pub. Date: March 2008
  • ISBN-13: 9780300137545
  • Sales Rank: 52,151
  • 672pp
  • Edition Number: 1
 
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Synopsis

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.

Jim Doyle - Library Journal

Dwyer (modern history, Univ. of Newcastle, Australia; Napoleon and Europe) offers a thorough and engrossing examination of Napoleon Bonaparte's meteoric rise to power. He follows Napoleone di Buonaparte (who changed his name in 1796) from his birth in Corsica (1769) until the coup d'AŠtat of 18 Brumaire (1799). The result is a truly human portrait of a man who claimed to be larger than life. Dwyer stresses that Napoleon was born into a clannish Corsican family heavily involved in the island's political intrigues and that his familial experiences served him well in the turbulent times of revolutionary France. Unraveling many of the myths connected with the early campaigns in northern Italy and Egypt, Dwyer shows that self-promotion was the engine driving Napoleon. He was a gifted political animal who skillfully embellished his early military achievements to create an aura of predestined greatness. These themes are not new (see, e.g., Stephen Englund's Napoleon: A Political Life), but they have never been explored in such detail. This first of a projected two-volume study will give the specialist or any interested reader a much deeper understanding of one of the most fascinating figures in world history and is essential for all Napoleonic collections.

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Biography

Philip Dwyer is senior lecturer at The University of Newcastle. He is author or editor of numerous publications on Napoleonic Europe, and is currently writing a biography of Napoleon’s later years.

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Napoleon: The Path to Power 1769 - 1799by Anonymous

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August 04, 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.