THE LAST DAYS OF NAPOLEON'S EMPIRE

General Napoleon Bonaparte will never fade away. Year after year new volumes about this remarkable man appear. The Last Days of Napoleon's Empire, originally published in France in 1965, is history on a grand scale--romantic, dramatic, opinionated. Henry Lachouque author of Anatomy of Glory: Napoleon and His Guard, enjoys the details of Imperial court life and military manuevers. Napoleon's fall, from Waterloo to St. Helena, was dramatic and the author's lively narrative style captures the anger, intrigue and posturing of June, July, and August, 1815. Lachouque is, however, somewhat adoring of the Emperor's mystique and indulges in petulant remarks about ""British pharisecism,"" as if the hero's fall and degradation at the hands of the Allies were to be deplored. Yet, there is an immediacy and a sureness about the author's grasp of the subject which is most appealing. The translation by Lovett Edwards is sometimes a bit wooden, but, on the whole, reads well. An attractive book by one who knows how to tell a good story.