The Age of Napoleon: A History of European Civilization from 1789 to 1815 (The Story of Civilization Volume XI)

The Age of Napoleon: A History of European Civilization from 1789 to 1815 (The Story of Civilization Volume XI)

by Will and Ariel Durant

Hardcover Cloth 872 pages. Condition Very Good Dust Jacket Very Good. Reprint edition 1980. Nice tan boards with black 1/8 spine and gilt embossing shows off this Clean, tight, square copy with no marks, highlights or bookplates. Book Well kept and carefully stored in unread condition. Slight shelf wear. A clipped dust jacket smooth, clean and brilliant with slight shelf wear - a few wrinkles and chips. Not an ex-library, book club or remainder copy.

Durant did not plan to write this volume. His previous book, Rousseau and Revolution, ends with a final bow. But Durant lived longer than he anticipated (he died at 96), so he decided to devote his final years to a bonus book on Napoleon.

The Durants weave politics, religion, art, science, economics and more into their history. The result is not just an account of times past, but insights into the warp and weft of civilization, and in particular focusing on the timeless qualities of humanity, both the noble and the base, the things that are as true today as they were when people were using a reed stylus to scratch marks into tablets of river mud.

Napoleon Bonaparte

He was Cesare Borgia with twice the brains, and Machiavelli with half the caution and a hundred times the will.

Tocqueville put it well: he was as great as a man can be without virtue, and he was as wise as a man can be without modesty.

Napoleon, like most rulers and revolutionists, never allowed morality to hinder victory, and he trusted to success to whitewash his sins.

William James Durant was a prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for the 11-volume The Story of Civilization, written in collaboration with his wife Ariel and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for his book, The Story of Philosophy, written in 1926, which was considered "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy."

They were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1967 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.