Monthly Archives: May 2021

Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts (2014)

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My latest read. Andrew Roberts’ 900 page seminal work on the life of the great Napoleon Bonaparte. What was it about this individual that took him from relatively humble beginnings to becoming the Emperor of France and one of Europe’s greatest Generals.

As a young man he was gifted with an amazing intellect. He excelled in mathematics and read ferociously. Devouring such works as the histories of the Arabs, the philosophical writings of Voltaire, He also read Caesar, Cicero, Diderot as well as Nepos’ lives of the great captains which included chapters on Themistocles and Hannibal.

Two of Napoleons greatest heroes were Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great and his imagination opened him up to the possibility that he might one day stand alongside theses giants of the past.

When Life nearly died. Michael Benton (2003)

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Some 250 million years ago, 90% of all life on Earth was suddenly wiped out in a geological instant, in what became the greatest mass extinction of all time. The event which caused the extinction of the dinosaurs pales in to insignificance compared to this. What caused such a catastrophe is the central theme of distinguished Palaeontologist Michaels Bentons’ fascinating if not riveting book.

Perhaps too much emphasis is placed on periphery topics such as the historical advent of geology, the science of stratigraphy and the evolution of how layers of rock and fossils are dated and the events leading up to the extinction are long and exhaustive but the sixty four thousand dollar question as to what may have caused the great extinction represents perhaps the final dozen pages in a rather detailed book.

Aimed more towards students of Palaeontology and geology, any lay person with an interest in what happened would probably be best hunting down a National Geographic documentary on YouTube.