Condition: Condition: Good. Black boards with gilt "N" and wreath on front cover. 707 pages including index.
Blurb: Garden City Publishing Company, Garden City, New York, 1926. Hardcover. This is the 12th printing. This copy includes illustrations.
Emil Ludwig's biography of Napoleon, now quite old, still continues its remarkable presence as a classic of Napoleonic literature and has yet to be surpassed for its unique presentation. Writing in the present tense, Ludwig brings to life his subject's character better than any other biography of Napoleon.
The biography is divided into five books One, "The Island" (birth to marriage); Two, "The Torrent" (Army of Italy to First Counsel); Three, "The River" (Marengo to birth of Napoleon II); Four, "The Sea" (Russia to Waterloo); and Five, "The Rock" (St. Helena). Each book begins with a quote from Goethe.
Although Ludwig does not include a bibliography, the concluding four pages, the "Envoy", he states, "In this book, all the data are recorded facts, except the soliloquies." Also, in the acknowledgments he thanked Professor Pariset and Kurt Wildhagen for advice on the book and Edouard Driault and F.M. Kircheisen for help with supplying material for the illustrations.
Who Was Emil Ludwig? (Pulled from a highly rated Goodreads review)
Emil Ludwig (1881-1948) was a journalist and foreign correspondent who definitely got around. He interviewed several substantial political figures of his time, among them Stalin, Mussolini, Ataturk and Czechoslovakia's Masaryk. He also managed, post-WWII, to retrieve the coffins of Goethe and Schiller (that had somehow gone missing from Weimar circa 1943-44). Amid the whirlwind to-and-fro of his life he'd sit down every so often to hammer out a door-stopping biography on a historical personality of note - Bismarck, Goethe, Lincoln or Jesus, for example. These works had the distinctive twist of combining history with psychological analysis. His intent, as he conveys it in the afterword of this volume, was: "To examine this man's inner life; to explain his resolves and his refrainings, his deeds and his sufferings, his fancies and his calculations, as issuing from the moods of his heart - the disclosure of this great chain of affects, was at once the means and the end of the portrayal." Ludwig's biography of Bonaparte is the most renowned of these offerings and often idles, like an eccentric teen, at the fringe of the dance floor that is the Napoleonic canon.
Check out our online store for more great resources and learn about our virtual book clubs at postmarkedfromthestars.com.
You can also follow us on social media PostmarkedfromtheStars We have FB, IG, Twitter, and a YouTube channel with sci-fi related content!