“Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire”, by John Bierman

439 pages, St Martin’s Press, ISBN-13: 978-0312018276

Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire by John Bierman is history as sheer entertainment, and if it hadn’t really happened would be well-nigh unbelievable. This is the story of how a used-car-salesman-of-a-man became the Emperor of France, against all odds and even common sense, with shameless optimism, populist appeal, administrative incompetence and relentless sexual predation, protected and tolerated by virtue of a booming economy. Louis Napoleon came to power in an unlikely set of scenarios filled with irony and hilarity in the middle of 19^th Century France.

The first elected populist-turned-Dictator, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte preceded Hitler by 90 years, but this story of a harmless flirt turned into a desultory despot is a marvelous parody of the banal ambitions of all politicians. This man is rather like Clinton in shamelessness, ambition, optimism, sexual opportunism and gross administrative incompetence as to form the most unlikely story in all history. With so many cunning men greedy for power, how is it that such a man should come to power? Not only did he leap atop the greasy pole, but the charlatan Napoleon III outlasted the original Napoleon by ruling France for 22 years (the first four as a legally elected President; the last 18 years as Emperor). His reign gave stamp to an age and a style referred to as “Second Empire”. Napoleon III's rule (again, like Clinton’s) was sustained by a period of unprecedented Economic Growth – preceding over the initial stages of Industrialization in 19^th Century France.

All but forgotten now, Napoleon III’s greatest legacy to the present is modern Paris, to which he gets very little credit. Of course, none of this would be worthwhile if not exploited properly; fortunately John Bierman is more than equal to the task. Well written, both insightful and humorous, Bierman's sophisticated repartee never fails to exploit an opportunity for irony or the humor in his subject. Reading this book was more like eating a box of candy – I could not put it down – and was sad when it came to an end. It has been said great men are produced by times of dire circumstances. Bierman proves this postulate by pointing out how great times produced, in 19^th Century France, a man of small stature. Despite the shallow glamour of the Second Empire, it was ultimately destroyed it was when confronted by the politics of real consequence of Bismarck’s Prussia and his Realpolitik of Blood & Iron. For the next hundred years, beginning with the tragedy of the Paris Commune, France had to struggle to cope with Napoleon III’s other great legacy: a unified Germany on its eastern border.

Napoleon III stands as an important history of the dangerous consequences that self-serving populist charlatans pose for all history.

“The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome”, by Susan Wise Bauer

896 pages, W. W. Norton &Company, ISBN-13: 978-0393059748

The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer is perhaps the most compelling history book I've read in a long time, hitting where many other books miss by not assuming anything, just because it's the accepted theory of history. Bauer's narrative starts and ends with the primary source materials available to us, and where she makes conjecture she tells you its conjecture and then supports her reasoning with logic, intelligence and without any obvious bias; moreover, she clearly identifies all of the source material from which she draws her narratives. Add to that solid foundation a crisp, bright and engaging narrative style and this book may just be the finest historical work in decades.

Bauer bites off a very large mouthful but manages to digest it in a way that is both readable and entertaining. With The History of the Ancient World she delivers on her promise to deal with history based on written sources, leaving the dusty archaeological details to others. This approach can be a little disconcerting if you are used to reading dry academic histories, particularly in the study of the ancient Middle East where the usual academic history of Egypt, Sumeria and the Assyrians tends to be heavy on pottery shards and light on plot. I was at first disturbed by Bauer's smooth-flowing, light touch; she dwells almost exclusively on the story and avoided inconvenient archaeological facts and scholarly debates. At times the history seemed to be more an interpretation of mythology or a retelling of the grand story of human civilization, rather than an objective investigation of historical truth. But, of course, this seems to be what was intended here. In spite of the excellent use of maps (possibly the simplest and yet most comprehensive example I have ever seen; no place name mentioned in the text is left off of a map found nearby), and the extensive cited works section, this book is all about drama.

With Bauer, the play's the thing, and not the facts. And this is what makes this book so good: once you realize you are being told a story, you stop worrying and let Bauer sweep you away. From the ancient glory of Sumeria, through the incestuous Dynasties of Egypt (did you know Ramses II had his mummy's nose packed with peppercorns?), the brutality of the Assyrians, the mysteries of the Phoenicians, Alexander the Great and the rise of a small town named Rome, it is all told with verve, biting wit and an eye for the picaresque detail. While this is definitely not an academic work, its vast scope and the way it followsa narrative through time make it an exciting and interesting read – something you will enjoy as someone new to this time period, or as a scholar who wants something that ties together all that academic material you have tried to digest over the years. Of course, experts will quibble about this detail or that; there are probably large swathes of material here that would be contested by serious historians. But I would suggest relaxing, sitting back, putting up your feet and enjoying this book as the rich, old, flowing tale that it is. You can always ferret out the details later.

“The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany”, by William L. Shirer

1245 pages, Simon and Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-0671624200

William L. Shirer's classic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is the most complete single volume account of the history of Nazi Germany ever written. Shirer was a journalist, not an historian, and the advantages of this show in his very readable prose and his vivid descriptions (for example, often referring to Herman Goering as "the fat Field Marshall"). The book starts with the birth of the Nazi party and how it found a spokesman early on in an ex-serviceman named Adolf Hitler; the narrative continues through until the end of the war, Hitler's suicide and the final few days under Admiral Doenitz. The only warning to the casual reader is that the book's length exceeds 1200 pages and it is crammed to the brim with facts (also, it should be noted that the book was published over forty years ago and does not include more recent information that has come to light from, for example, the former East German archives). Nevertheless, this is still a classic work of journalistic history.

Shirer's book is abundantly documented, largely thanks to the bonanza of Nazi documents that fell almost untouched into Allied hands at the end of the war. Perhaps it was that mania for organization and precision that contributed to the "Final Solution": first, the determination that the Jews were to be eliminated and then the search for a method to most efficiently bring this about. So from mass shootings in the trenches, they progressed to Auschwitz and the gas chambers and kept searching for ways to improve the rate and efficiency of the carnage right up to the end. What kind of people would participate in something as monstrous as this? Some of the most chilling passages in the book are the descriptions of the defendants' testimony at the Nuremberg trials, as when one officer says without batting an eye that he personally oversaw the deaths of 90,000 people. Even this pales before the descriptions of the medical experiments in the concentration camps, when respected doctors prostituted their science and their souls in some of the most despicable tortures ever perpetrated on human beings, and lost their own humanity in the process.

One of the main strengths of the book, besides the wealth of documentation, is that it was written only 14 years after the end of the war, when many of the main characters were still alive. Shirer gives grudging respect to those Germans such as Halder and Speer who were able to face up to and acknowledge their own guilt and complicity that allowed the unspeakable to become real (one wonders what Heydrich or Von Ribbentrop would have told him had they not been executed, one by Czech partisans and the other by a hangman's noose after the Nuremberg trials). Shirer narrates in detail the failed plot to kill Hitler by his own officers in 1944, the revenge exacted by Hitler and his kangaroo courts, the Allied invasion of Western Europe and the final assault by Russia and the Allied forces that destroyed Nazi Germany, and not a minute too soon. He feels some sympathy for the German people who followed Hitler blindly to their own destruction, like lemmings over a cliff - although I found it difficult to share his feelings, for one reads this awesome book and feels that they brought it on themselves by enthusiastically backing Hitler's rise to power and, in doing so, unleashed a monster.