The Shadow Emperor - A Biography of Napoleon III

-Louis Napoleon-s story is certainly remarkable. Alan Strauss-Schom tells it with brio in The Shadow Emperor- This is a boldly revisionist biography- For all the corruption and repression that marked his reign, Louis Napoleon may have done more for France than his famous uncle.- (Alan Massie, Wall Street Journal)This is the definitive biography, and the first in twenty years, of Louis-Napol- III, whose controversial achievements have notoriously divided historians. Here, pre-eminent Napol- Bonaparte expert and Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian Alan Strauss-Schom focuses on his successor Louis-Napol-, overshadowed for too long by his more romanticized forebear. Strauss-Schom employs years of primary source research to explore the massive cultural, social, economical, financial, international, and military impact of France''s most polarizing emperor. Louis-Napol- completely revolutionized the state and the economy, but amid gross financial scandals. His expansion of the French Empire wa