Napoleon: A Life Told in Gardens and Shadows

by Ruth Scurr

Best Books of the Year • Financial Times , The Times (of London), History Today Marking the 200th anniversary of his death, Napoleon is an unprecedented portrait of the emperor told through his engagement with the natural world. “How should one envisage this subject? With a great pomp of words, or with simplicity?” ―Charlotte Brontë, “The Death of Napoleon” The most celebrated general in history, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) has for centuries attracted eminent male writers. Since Thomas Carlyle first christened him “our last Great Man,” regiments of biographers have marched across the same territory, weighing campaigns and conflicts, military tactics and power politics. Yet in all this time, no definitive portrait of Napoleon has endured, and a mere handful of women have written his biography―a fact that surely would have pleased him. With Napoleon , Ruth Scurr, one of our most eloquent and original historians, emphatically rejects the shibboleth of the “Great Man” theory of history, instead following the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon’s life through gardens, parks, and forests. As Scurr reveals, gardening was the first and last love of Napoleon, offering him a retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Gardens were, at the same time, a mirror image to the battlefields on which he fought, discrete settings in which terrain and weather were as important as they were in combat, but for creative rather than destructive purposes. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary and historical scholarship, and taking us from his early days at the military school in Brienne-le-Château through his canny seizure of power and eventual exile, Napoleon frames the general’s story through the green spaces he cultivated. Amid Corsican olive groves, ornate menageries in Paris, and lone garden plots on the island of Saint Helena, Scurr introduces a diverse cast of scientists, architects, family members, and gardeners, all of whom stood in the shadows of Napoleon’s meteoric rise and fall. Building a cumulative panorama, she offers indelible portraits of Augustin Bon Joseph de Robespierre, the younger brother of Maximilien Robespierre, who used his position to advance Napoleon’s career; Marianne Peusol, the fourteen-year-old girl manipulated into a Christmas-Eve assassination attempt on Napoleon that resulted in her death; and Emmanuel, comte de Las Cases, the atlas maker to whom Napoleon dictated his memoirs. As Scurr contends, Napoleon’s dealings with these people offer unusual and unguarded opportunities to see how he grafted a new empire onto the remnants of the ancien régime and the French Revolution. Epic in scale and novelistic in its detail, Napoleon , with stunning illustrations, is a work of revelatory range and depth, revealing the contours of the general’s personality and power as no conventional biography can. 40 black-and-white illustrations

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, France, Nature, Audiobook, War

416 pages, Hardcover

Published June 15, 2021

About the author

Dr Ruth Scurr (born 1971, London) is a British writer, historian and literary critic. She is a Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. She was educated at St Bernard's Convent, Slough; Oxford University, Cambridge University and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. She won a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2000.

Her first book, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (Chatto & Windus, 2006; Metropolitan Books, 2006) won the Franco-British Society Literary Prize (2006), was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize (2006), long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize (2007) and was listed among the 100 Best Books of the Decade in The Times in 2009. It has been translated into five languages.

Scurr began reviewing regularly for The Times and The Times Literary Supplement in 1997. Since then she has also written for The Daily Telegraph, The Observer, New Statesman, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New York Observer, The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal.

She was a judge on the Man Booker Prize panel in 2007, and the Samuel Johnson Prize panel in 2014. She is a member of the Folio Prize Academy.

Scurr is Director of Studies in Human, Social and Political Sciences for Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where she has been a Fellow since 2006. Her research interests include: 17th and 18th century history of ideas; biographical, autobiographical and life writing; the British and French Enlightenments; the French Revolution; Revolutionary Memoir; early Feminist Political Thought; and contemporary fiction in English.

She was married to the political theorist John Dunn between 1997 and 2013. She has two daughters and a stepson.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Matt Conger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it surprising to learn that someone as ambitious (megalomaniac?) as Napoleon was also obsessed with gardening, a hobby that is literally about imposing one’s will on nature? Nope. Is it amusing to read that his same penny-pinching applied to building greenhouses as it did to building chateau? Yep.

This was a fun book, similar to You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington in that it focused on a few human traits of an otherwise God-like figure. And because the author deservedly is proud of the fact she’s one of the few female biographers of a very bro-y historical figure.

The book is a cradle-to-grave biography but with a large focus on Napoleon’s interactions with the natural world at each phase of his life. I always find it especially heartbreaking when reading a Napoleon biography and getting to the parts towards the end of his life when he realizes he’ll never see his wife and son again. This book dwells on that considering it is a motivation to throw all of his energy into gardening during his exile.

The author does a fun job describing certain peripheral characters in much more depth than you’d expect from a 300-page book meant to profile Napoleon. Certain curators, gardeners, artists and even a teenage victim of the infernal machine attack, all get a nice mini-biography in here.

Final note: the cover image is super cool. It took me a bit to realize what was going on, but it is essentially a drawing of “the Napoleon you never knew” (as a gardener) superimposed over “the Napoleon you think you know” (submitting the Alps) with the placement of his famous bicorne hat as the link between the two images.

Will recommend this as someone’s third or fourth book about Napoleon. It shouldn’t be the first biography you read of the guy, but it definitely belongs in the queue once you do.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

In one of the most unique history books I've read in a long time, Napoleon: A Life Told in Gardens and Shadows details the life of Napoleon Bonaparte through his interactions with the natural world. As Ruth Scurr makes clear, if Napoleon had not taken up politics and warfare, science would have laid in his future.

Napoleon relished in conversing with fellow scientists of the time and brought many of them along during his campaign in Egypt. This would help birth the field of Egyptology. He and Josphine gathered rare and exotic plants and animals from all over the world to exhibit in their lavish gardens. He aspired to shape the natural world with his grand visions of gardens and monuments. Fascinating stories abound in this book with Napoleon and his entourage taking a deep and enlightened fascination with nature.

This is not the book to read for a detailed assessment of his politics or war making. Many other fine books delve into Napoleon the General or Emperor. I would highly recommend Andrew Roberts' book. Ruth Scurr, instead, shines a bright and nourishing light on the shadow of Napoleon's forgotten pashions. It's Napoleon the Botanist, Napoleon the Architect, Napoleon the Scientist, and Napoleon the Gardener that is briliantly illustrated. For those interested in reading a very different side to Napoleon, this is a five-star read.

[Suanne Laqueur · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just imagine Ruth Scurr thinking, “I want to write this biography of Napoleon, but frame it in the context of gardens. Gardens he loved, gardens he built, gardens where significant events of his life took place, gardens where battles were fought, etc. I just don’t know if anyone will like it. I hope someone likes it.”

Me: (sobbing)

[MJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐

This was not my first Napoleon biography nor the most interesting one I've read. I liked learning about what plant varieties Napoleon brought to Europe. I also appreciate having a different view of him. However I feel like this could have been a chapter in a more detailed view. The author remarks on how women don't typically tackle Napoleon. I feel like this book would have been really interesting if it was about all the women in his life, including mother nature and his connection to gardening as a more feminine pursuit.

[David C Ward · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. Scurr’s biography of Robespierre is good and I like studies that pick out a minor or unemphasized trait or interest in a life. But. Except for his final exile when he had very little to do, there is no real evidence that Napoleon was all that interested in gardening beyond what would be expected of an educated Frenchman who owned property. Raised in a century saturated with a Romantic view of nature it’s not surprising he would use imagery like “the pear is not yet ripe” (re: his imperial ambitions) and have opinions that favored straight lines over English rambles. (Josephine was the real gardener in the family, immersed in the details of improving Malmaison and St Cloud.) So this is a potted biography of Napoleon with some emphasis on his well known encouragement of the sciences, both because he was genuinely interested and as an instrument of state power and national glory. The reference to “shadows” in the subtitle is just an attempt to be dramatic and barely plays any part of the book.

By the way, I suspect that when Coleridge called Napoleon a “world gardener” he was being mordantly ironic.

[Phil Schuler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will be honest, I did not read the whole title when I found this on Net Galley. I saw "Napoleon" and that was it. It is an interesting concept, Napoleon through gardening. I felt that some of it was stretching a point and making too much of the gardening angle but it was interesting. More history was stuffed in than I thought possible once I realized the entire title.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn't start here if I weren't already fairly familiar with Napoleon's life, but if you are, it throws a lot of interesting sidelights on him.

[Monica San Miguel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esta biografía me ha dejado una sensación rara, por una parte el punto de vista desde el que expone a la figura de Napoleon es muy atrayente y curiosa puesto que se centra totalmente en relacion con los jardines que fue creando a lo largo de su vida, sin embargo, el texto gira y gira entorno a esa obsesión pero sin llegar a traspasar a la figura del emperador, se va demasiado por las ramas para mi gusto tanto en su acercamiento a esa enorme figura como en la narrativa que me resulta un tanto enmarañada; quizás para un primer acercamiento al personaje sea una biografia demasiado particular y me deja con sabor a poco.

[Judith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this biography of Napoleon. It was well researched, and provided many fascinating details about him, plus significant people and places in his life. Napoleon’s interest in horticulture, so well described and documented, adds new insights into his personality, and they contrast sharply with the events he is most associated with. An excellent read.

[Gilbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting concept, however not much new information and lack of analysis (tough that is not this books aim I would guess, it would have made it more ''fleshed out''). All in all a decent book and a pretty good basic introduction to Napoleon.

3.5

[Alexander Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

A journey of Napoleon's life, told through flowers, cabbages, and exotic plants. This ambitious, often untold story of France's emperor offers new perspectives that many authors have neglected or not explored in detail.

Having little understanding of horticulture myself, the book demonstrates how nature will always be humankind's ultimate authority, and the constant juxtapositions between the peace of nature and the brutality of war are well illustrated.

Some chapters I enjoyed more than others, but it was overall a good read. Therefore, I give it 4/5.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe shouldn't be your first Napoleon biography, unless you already know a lot about 19th century Europe. But if you are looking for a second one, I loved this one!

[Michael Reilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting take on Napoleon.

Scurr tracks his lifelong interest in gardens, zoos and farms. She tells us that Napoleon believed that if he had not become a great general, he would have become a great scientist. He was born in Corsica. His family owned several farms, and he grew up in a farming family.

Napoleon had strong opinions on everything, including gardens. He and Antoinette moved into a home with large grounds. They both took an interest in designing them. When he became Emperor, he was intimately involved in designing the zoos and gardens of Paris. Of course, he spent his last years tending his garden on St. Helena.

I am not completely convinced that this gives us great insights into Napoleon. With his gardens, as with his battles, he was decisive, at times he demanded unrealistic results from his subordinates, he always thought long term and big picture and was never slowed down by failure, he immediately moved to the next plan. None of this gives us much new insight into him.

There is some interesting stuff. I did not know how popular zoos were in France. Scurr tells the story of Hans and Margurette. They were two elephants originally captured by the Dutch in Ceylon and taken to Holland. When the French armies occupied that country they confiscated the elephants and sent them by ship to the zoo in the Jardin des Plantes, the great Napoleonic gardens in Paris.

One of the most famous paintings of Napoleon is Jacques-Louis David's "First Consul, crossing the Alps at Great St. Bernard". It shows an heroic Napoleon on a huge, beautiful horse rearing up on its hind legs. Scurr tells us that in fact Napoleon crossed the Alps on a mule, which was safer and more practical.

There are more details on the design of garden houses, the breeding of flowers and styles of gardens then I was interested in. Scurr is an excellent biographer. He biography of John Aubrey is brilliant. This one wasn't my cup of tea.

[Graychin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“What a pity,” wrote Paul Valéry, “to see a mind as great as Napoleon’s devoted to trivial things such as empires, historic events, the thundering of cannons and of men; he believed in glory, in posterity, in Caesar… How could he fail to see that what really mattered was something else entirely?” Simon Leys borrowed that quote as an epigraph for his underrated novella The Death of Napoleon, which I reviewed here some years ago. Ruth Scurr employs it too in her peculiar new book, Napoleon: A Life Told in Gardens and Shadows, but she also demonstrates that Napoleon didn’t, perhaps, entirely “fail to see” the “something else” Valéry hints at.

What interests Scurr are not Napoleon’s military exploits (yawn!) but his surprising lifelong passions for natural history, architecture, and especially for gardening, which weave through his entire career from “the gardens of his childhood at school and on Corsica; the Tuileries, the Jardin des Plantes, and other Parisian gardens; Egyptian gardens; Malmaison; St Cloud; Compiegne; the gardens and the forest at Fontainebleau; imagined gardens at Rome and at Chaillot for [his infant son] the King of Rome; unfinished gardens on Elba; the garden at Waterloo [Hougoumont] that became an inferno; and finally, his last garden” on St Helena.

Napoleon seems always to have wondered if he’d picked the wrong career. While touring the pyramids on his Egyptian sojourn, he remarked: “I found myself a conqueror in Europe like Alexander; it had been more to my liking to march in the footsteps of Newton.” And in a speech to mark the establishment of a scientific institute in Cairo, he said: “The real conquests, the only unregretted ones, are those against ignorance. The worthiest and most significant occupation for nations is to enlarge the frontiers of human knowledge.”

Scurr (a Cambridge don and the author of a quasi-autobiography of John Aubrey) makes all of this fascinating and fresh and unexpected. Rather than setting her book next to classics of military history, you might happily shelve it alongside worthy titles on natural history like Thorkild Hanssen’s Arabia Felix or Andrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature. There’s a surprising amount of material here, lest anyone imagine Scurr is stretching a point, but she also leavens her tale with a lot of wonderful trivia.

For example, there’s the story of General Caffarelli’s piecemeal dismemberment. First, he lost a leg in battle after the Revolution; then, while crossing a branch of the Red Sea on horseback, he lost the wooden leg that replaced it; then he had an arm amputated after another battle injury in the Levant, which led to infection and resulted in his death. Finally, Caffarelli’s heart was removed and mummified according to the Egyptian method for its return to Paris.

Then there’s the tale of old Hadyn on his deathbed during the siege of Vienna. While the city was under fire from French howitzers, he weakly assured his servants and family, “Children, don’t be frightened, where Hadyn is nothing can happen to you.” When the city was finally taken, Napoleon sent an officer to Hadyn’s home to sing “In Native Worth and Honor Clad” from The Creation at the dying composer’s bedside.

Then there’s the story of the dog Moustache who lost his paw defending a battle flag at Austerlitz and was awarded a medal for bravery.

And did you know that Chinese laborers on St Helena were (outrageously) referred to by number because the British had such a hard time pronouncing their names? Three men – recorded by history only as Numbers 146, 174, and 178 – built Napoleon a three-level aviary for his hens and pet songbirds, which still exists.

There in his final exile on St Helena, Napoleon threw himself once more into gardening. He had flowers and trees and shrubs planted and he collected specimens of the local flora. He had sunken pathways dug so he could saunter round his plots without being spied on by guards. He had carp ponds made to his own specifications and when his fish kept dying, he remarked: “There is a fatality attached to me. Everything I love, everything that belongs to me, is immediately struck: heaven and mankind unite to persecute me.”

We can only scoff at self-pitying words uttered by a man who turned half the world upside down and wrought the deaths of so many thousands, but perhaps by then Napoleon really was done with war. He wanted to start over again, again. When he’d turned himself over to the British after Waterloo, he was reading one of Humboldt’s books on South America. Hoping for an easy exile across the Atlantic, he wrote in a letter: “I want to make a new career and leave behind work and discoveries worthy of me. I need a companion who can bring me rapidly up to date with the current state of the sciences. Then we will travel to the new continent together, from Canada to Cape Horn, and during that immense voyage, we will study all the great phenomena of the physical world.”

Those hopes were disappointed, of course, but even on St Helena he had the consolation of his last garden. Near the end of his life, refusing medical care and in pain, the great soldier concluded that, after all, “man’s true vocation is to cultivate the ground.”

[Othman Alamri · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece. Made a classical figure so novel.

[Marius · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Napoleon, a life in Gardens and Shadows" by Ruth Scurr is definitely one of the most interesting books, which I have ever read. I bought it during the covid pandemic, but only now started to read, and it have fascinated me.

We know Napoleon as the great military leader, as the Emperor, the reformer or even a lover, but did you know, that he passionately loved gardening. In the book introduction, R. Scurr writes: "gardening was the first and last passion of Napoleon Bonaparte. <...> Between cultivating his first garden at school in Brienne-le-Chateau, in the Champagne region of southern France, and his last in exile on the South Atlantic island of St Helene, he won and lost an empire."

Napoleon creates gardens everywhere his army goes. He admired the beautiful Renaissance gardens in Italy, he ordered improvements the garden the palace of al-Alfi Bey on Azbakiyya Square (Cairo), arranging for the installation of walkways, marble basins and fountains, grafting French features, he created a "love avenue" for Marie Luisa, this avenue "stretching from the chateau of Compiegne far into the forest, which would remind her of the gardens of her beloved Schonbrun palace."

The author describes the every tree, park, orchard or parterre which were touched by Napoleon or Josephine hands. Moreover, there is a wide context about flora symbolism during the French revolution. The most picturesque chapter is about the creation of Malmaison garden, which Josephine made an exotic place in the middle of France, with Australian and African animals, huge rosary and the biggest greenhouse in the country.

Did you know, Napoleon planed to create an English style garden in the Roman forum, he demolished a lot of churches to built a park in Venice, at Malmaison, Josephine commemorated the Battle of Marengo by planting a cedar of Lebanon (you can see it until now) and the Longwood house (St Helene) Napoleon converted into the oasis of tranquility. In candid moment he told General Baron Gourgaud that if he had not been a captive, the life he lived on St. Helene would have suited him very well. "I should like to live in the country; I should like to see the soil improved by other, for I do not know enough about gardening to improve it myself. That kind of thing is the noblest existence." At the end of his life he believed, "Man's true vocation is to cultivate the ground."

So, I highly recommend this book, because it is a pleasure to read.

[Karen Mace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who knew?! I know I didn't but the inimitable character that was Napoleon was a big fan of gardens and this book takes us through his life looking at the lands he cultivated throughout his lifetime, and exploits in a really original and fascinating look back at such a well known historical figure.

There's a very handy dateline at the start to set the scene and then his story plays out from childhood to adulthood looking at his roots, his time at boarding school where his love of gardening began when he was given a little plot to tend, and how he carried that through to every stage of his life that followed.

It looks at his family history and the area he grew up in, alongside that of his personal life, his relationship with Josephine and also a really in depth look at his army career which flourished and his rise to fame and power. You also see the influence of Josephine as his gardening fashions changed as her extravagances to get the best inspired him.

I found myself learning so much about him as a character along with moments of history that made him. The author tells his story in a really engaging way that is more than just a list of facts and figures. It fleshes him out and shows the styles and fashions, especially in gardening, that were happening at the time. I also really liked the colour illustrations of paintings of the important places that meant so much to him. The story takes you all across Europe and really gets you closer to the kind of man he was. A really fascinating biography.

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Napoleon was many things, including a man of almost boundless intellectual curiosity. It was a nice idea on Scurr's part to focus on his interest in the vegetal world, and it would have made a fascinating article. Stretched to the length of a book which follows its subject from the cradle to the grave, like any ordinary biography, it gets a bit absurd, because inevitably the reader gets the impression that Napoleon spent most of his time designing gardens if not planting trees himself. Of course lots of his other achievements and blunders are referenced throughout, but because of her choice of topic, Scurr ends up giving a rather bizarre portrayal of the Emperor as frustrated gardener. So although she deserves credit for writing very readable scholarly prose, I think her project was flawed from the start.

[Phreia Von Woolfgaard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook version of this novel. I have read so much information on Napoleon Bonaparte but this was so interesting. It focused on all the main things and battles we know so well but framed all of it with gardens. Before this I never knew the scope at which Napoleon loved gardens and the way he valued them. Even if you didn't know I anything about the man at all this would be a good book to read to get a feel of him. This book could be the launching point for any reader to go further in depth in the fields they are interested in. Whether it be his love of science, his politics, or his strategic thinking. My only complaint about the audiobook is that the narrator does have a less emotive voice so at times it brings a dryness.

[Michael Martinelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting concept. Intriguing minutaie of what was going on behind the scenes. For example, loved Louis XVI inquiring - on the morning he was to face the guillotine - as to whether a seafaring explorer long missing in the Pacific had turned up! That kind of stuff and a lot of day to day about the Emperor's families and his varied interests in garden design. Including the beginning of the Arc de Triumphe based upon the Roman Arch of Titus and his extensive plans to redesign the area of the forum and colosseum. In the Emperor's mind, Paris was the new Rome after all.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read but certainly not the best book to make the first one reads about Napoleon. In this book, presumably because RS was writing to a length, so many of the (many many) peripheral characters appear and then disappear completely, I constantly wanted to go to other sources to look up what happened to them in the end.
It certainly brings out well the fact that he was such a clever man - could have been an eminent scientist or naturalist.
But it’s an interesting take, and fleshes out the man and his character.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun concept. Honestly, I only skimmed it, because I didn’t quite care enough about Napoleon to read the whole thing. But I liked her take.

Poor Napoleon at the end, though. The soil on St. Helena was poor and dry enough that nearly everything he tried to plant died, and he lived in the era of collecting exotic plants, not in the era of figuring out what *does* grow in your biome, so he couldn’t get it to work. And his pond (lined with lead and oil paints) kept poisoning the fish and the birds in his aviary kept dying. It was rough.

[Peggy Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

A charming and unusual “biography” of Napoleon centered on his interest in the natural world and love of gardening - which was really about ordering and making sense of the natural. Unlike Josephine, who brought the more naturalistic English style to her gardens, Napoleon preferred ordered, controlled and formal French gardens. Ever the parvenu, he combined the reason of the Enlightenment with the taste of the Ancien Regime. A lovely glimpse into the humanity of one of the Great Men of history.

[Tom Griffiths · Rating 4 out of 5]

I re ommend this to history fans, history know it alls and history novices. The author sets out to do something original and entertaining. She writes a new biography of Napolean that plows new ground. By focusing on napoleans interest in creation of buildings, gardens, a government she manages a new perspective on a fascinating icon. It does not tell the complete story of napolean, but it does not set out to. What it tells it tells well.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an odd book--well written from a particular point of view. It is a biography of Napoleon focusing on his gardens. Starting from his family's land in Corsica through his exile in St. Helena, it examines how Napoleon (and Josephine) developed gardens. It is, therefore, rather sparse in certain areas--Russia, two pages. However, Waterloo was fought in a garden--lots of detail.

If you are a Napoleon fan, you will enjoy this odd look.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most interesting biographies I've ever read. Napoleon's military career is only mentioned when necessary. Scurr instead focuses in on his love of the natural sciences and the arts. She uses this framing to tell the stories of the people who surrounded Napoleon that are often overlooked, from the architects, artists and gardeners in his employ to the girl killed in an attempt on Napoleon's life. This has really made me reconsider what a biography can be.

[Sam Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good supplementary history of Napoleon that assumes the reader knows a lot of facts surrounding the subject, so the author brings attention to lesser known details of Napoleon, as well as offering an alternative perspective from which to view the man's life. Enjoyable, but not the first book I'd go to for a history on Napoleon.

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book from my Libby library app from my list of non-fiction and fiction books that could be interesting. I haven't done much reading into the life of Napoleon before, so it caught my eye. It has a unique take on the life of Napoleon, highlighting the garden settings in which much of Napoleon's life took place. Perhaps not the first thing you think of when you think of Napoleon.

[Coby Goldberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

For what this is (a biography of a Great Man™), this is quite good! I was worried the focus on gardening would be to the neglect of the rest of his life, but this manages to cover the subject in a way that really does give insight into his mindset at different points of his life, from the micromanaging leader to the slightly stir-crazy exile.

[Ally Perrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Napoleon might not have believed in God, but he certainly believed in order, and he was assured by two of the Institute members he most trusted and relied on, La Place and Cuvier, that Lamarck’s understanding of the natural world was deeply flawed. Lamarck’s suggestion that living organisms continually and gradually transform themselves was radical, anti-authoritarian, and subversive.