NAPOLEON BONAPARTE A Life

This is an unadorned, straightforward reading of a long biography of Napoleon. Geoffrey Howard approaches the task unemotionally, reading steadily as if in a marathon, with not much inflection but no errors of diction, and with a smooth pronunciation of foreign names and places. He never varies his pacing, no matter the battle or mistress he's describing. The book seems like one battle after another, mostly because that's what Napoleon inflicted on Europe. His grandiosity and indifference to suffering come through plainly. The listener gains little sense of why this strange man captured the imagination of France and dominated Europe for so many years. D.R.W. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 00]