Patrice Gueniffey is the leading French historian of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic age. And he is Director of Studies at L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

Steven Rendall is a freelance translator from French and German with more than fifty book translations to his credit. He lives in southwestern France and visits Berlin whenever he can. His translation of Marcel Bénabou's novel Jacob, Menahem, and Mimoun: A Family Epic won the Jewish Book Council's Sandra Brand and Arik Weintraub Award in 1999, and his translation of Harald Weinrich's Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting won the MLA's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize in 2005. His translations of selected poems from Harald Weinrich's Das Leben und Lesen der Tiere: Ein Bestiarium recently appeared in Words Without Borders . (2010)

This book, hailed as a masterwork on its publication in France, takes up the epic narrative at the heart of this turbulent period: the life of Napoleon himself, the man who—in Madame de Staël’s words—made the rest of “the human race anonymous.” Gueniffey follows Bonaparte from his obscure boyhood in Corsica, to his meteoric rise during the Italian and Egyptian campaigns of the Revolutionary wars, to his proclamation as Consul for Life in 1802. Bonaparte is the story of how Napoleon became Napoleon. A future volume will trace his career as emperor.

Most books approach Napoleon from an angle—the Machiavellian politician, the military genius, the life without the times, the times without the life. Gueniffey paints a full, nuanced portrait. We meet both the romantic cadet and the young general burning with ambition—one minute helplessly intoxicated with Josephine, the next minute dominating men twice his age, and always at war with his own family. Gueniffey recreates the violent upheavals and global rivalries that set the stage for Napoleon’s battles and for his crucial role as state builder. His successes ushered in a new age whose legacy is felt around the world today.

Averse as we are now to martial glory, Napoleon might seem to be a hero from a bygone time. But as Gueniffey says, his life still speaks to us, the ultimate incarnation of the distinctively modern dream to will our own destiny.