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Title: Schom critiques the musicians, but never heard the music.
Review: For 100 years after the defeat of Napoleon the aristocracies of Europe castigated him and stifled the democratic movement until the horror of WW1. Schom gleefully repeats the full content of their propaganda. Napoleon, with all his faults, represented the emergence of a system of government based on merit and social responsibility. While his failures are well known, Schom fixates on his vanity. I would have preferred learning new insights into how this simple man captivated so many earnest social reformers dedicated to reinventing the role of government, or how he rewrote military tactics, or how his life affected the patterns of history. Instead I droned through pages of petty gossip and puerile tales. Irritating in its naivete.
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