Napoleon is too many-sided and even contradictory a personality to be captured in a single volume, though many people have tried to do just that. A military dictator who yet spread the ideals of the French Revolution, who spent most of his life at war, yet bequeathed France her civil code, who emancipated the Jews yet exiled liberals such as Madame de Stael - it is hard to believe that all these aspects existed in a single human being. Napoleon combined, as has been said, the military talents of Alexander the Great with the administrative gifts of Julius Caesar, but his project of a united Europe was thwarted and though he raised France to continental hegemony, he left her disillusioned and exhausted. This is a sound, unprejudiced biography, but it leaves much to be said or argued over.