Napoleon Bonaparte's character and achievements have always divided critics and commentators. In this compelling biography, Frank McLynn has drawn on exhaustive research and the most recent scholarship to throw a brilliant light on this most paradoxical of men--as military leader, lover, and emperor.

Tracing Napoleon's extraordinary career, McLynn examines the Promethean legend from his Corsican roots, through the chaotic years of the French Revolution and his extraordinary military triumphs, to the coronation in 1804, his fateful decision in 1812 to add Russia to his seemingly endless conquests, and his ultimate defeat, imprisonment, and death on Saint Helena. Napoleon the man emerges as an even more fascinating character than previously imagined, and McLynn brilliantly reveals the extent to which he was both existential hero and plaything of Fate; mathematician and mystic; intellectual giant and moral pygmy; Great Man and deeply flawed human being.