The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History Illustrated Edition

I just received my copy and scanned through it. All I can say at this point is that it’s a Herculean effort. 250 pages of detailed notes and bibliography alone! I don’t know a great deal about the author, but this would be a lifetime effort for most.Not to be too much of a pedant, but I often consider the type size for ease of reading. This book’s is adequate, but I usually like it larger. That simple couldn’t be done here without transforming it into a 3 volume set. Again, to make another pedestrian observation, this is a superlative value for amount of information contained at the price. Purchase is justified, if only to have it as a reference text along side David Chandler’s work. But there is a far better reason. The author’s writing is very good and reading for pleasure is both easy and enjoyable.Postscript: Since first writing this review, I’ve read several more chapters at the other end. I can only describe it as brilliant. And it is probably the best value book I’ve ever purchased. I can’t recommend it too highly.

This really was a fascinating read and should frankly be a five-star book. It paints a broad picture of the global effects of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars without getting too lost in details. As such, I highly recommend it to those new to the Napoleonic Wars as well as those thoroughly invested in the subject.Unfortunately, Oxford University Press did the author a huge disservice with their dismal editing. On average, I found myself getting distracted by grammatical errors probably every two or three pages. Lots of missing words, extra words, and grammatical number errors throughout the text. The editing is downright inexcusable. As such, I can only give it a four out of five.

This is an impressive work. It does not provide groundbreaking information, but it does exhaust the secondary sources of the period, nicely supplemented with some primary archival material. So, the expert looking for new information in a narrow field might be disappointed. However, even for the advanced student of the period, this is a very useful volume as it provides a global linkage of events. Even the specialist will find the bibliography useful, with its generous use of so many foreign language sources. The book is not for the faint of heart, but the individual who has expertise in a specialized field will find it useful, as will any serious student of the period.

Excellent History of the times

A really good read on the Napoleonic Wars that recognizes that these wars were mainly a European affair, but the book also has a focus on how the wars affected the rest of the world. Very interesting, and you will enjoy it. Plus, the guy taught at FSU.

Alexander Mikaberidze’s “The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History” is exactly what its title states: a survey of the Napoleonic era, with a pronounced emphasis on the global character of the two decades of conflict. In this, it succeeds. Mikaberidze provides a fine summary of the political and economic setting of the French Revolution, the meteoric rise of Bonaparte from young commander of the Italian campaign to conqueror of most of Europe, and the formation of the shifting coalitions that opposed him. This is *not* a classic military history — for example, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia (the largest European campaign of the nineteenth century) is covered in a few pages. A more serious problem, given that the absence of battle detail is a feature, not a bug, is the numerous instances of glitches in writing and, occasionally, in factual detail. I don’t regret my investment of time and effort, but some editing would have earned the book that fifth star.

As I attempt to to get a fuller understanding of world history I tend to look for books that put their particular subject in the context of world events. This book did a great job of meeting this goal. It is well written, interesting, and well sourced. It made me smarter.

I ordered this book because of a rave review in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. I've just finished reading the entire book, which lived up to that review. The author's knowledge of the subject is amazingly extensive. The book is readable and engaging throughout and is well documented with 189 pages of endnotes.The book's very effective organization protected me from being overwhelmed by the complexities of simultaneous important developments in different parts of the world. In the portion of the book covering the period 1807 to 1812, separate chapters treated Napoleon's Grand Empire, the Iberian Peninsula, Scandinavia, the Ottoman Empire, Iran, India, and the Americas. Each of those chapters told an interesting and manageable story. I shudder to think how tedious and confusing that portion of the book could have been had the author elected instead to present but a single chronological sequence of events.My only complaint is with the maps, of which there are 29. Several are so small that the names of cities are unreadable without a magnifying glass. Some maps include shading that is too dark to allow names to stand out from the background.