"Napoleon has never lost his power to stir emotions - even now advertisers of commercial products believe that association with his name or portrait is potent. But his significance has never been uniform or undisputed. Historical writing has harboured innumerable shades of opinion within the broad camps of supporters and detractors, which must often provoke in the modern reader an understandable, if perhaps muted, outburst: 'who was he?'" "Alexander's study takes that question as its starting point. How can the various characterizations of Napoleon, some strikingly incompatible, be reconciled? Frequently compared to Adolf Hitler, whose war of annihilation dismembered and all but destroyed Europe, how can Napoleon also be championed as the father of modern European integration? Much of the 'problem' lies in the ambiguities surrounding his character and rule, which he was himself adept at fostering for his own ends: Napoleon's power lay in part in reflecting what others wanted to see. This book reveals how the process unfolded in his own lifetime and continued after his death as exile on St. Helena, looking not only at the creative efforts of writers and artists but also at historical circumstance. Posterity has borrowed freely but also selectively from the diverse elements that constitute the Napoleonic saga. Each age, including our own, has shaped Napoleon according to its needs and preoccupations. Each is accurate in its way; the orginality of Alexander's investigation is in allowing us to understand the ways in which these various 'truths' emerge."--BOOK JACKET.