Book excerpt: Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte is a biographical account based on years of intimate friendship and professional association of the author with Napoleon. Bourrienne, the author of this memoir met Bonaparte at the Military Academy at Brienne in Champagne when eight years old. His book gives a vivid, intimate, detailed account of his interactions with Napoleon and his mother, brothers and sisters, with his first wife Joséphine de Beauharnais and her children. His narrative is invigorated by many dialogues, not only of those in which he was a speaker but even of conversations that he only was told about by others. As an author, Bourrienne tired to put his friendship with Napoleon aside and to be balanced. He gives many examples of Napoleon's brilliance, his skill at governance, and his deft political maneuvers, while deploring his inexorable grabs for personal and familial power and wealth, his willingness to sacrifice French lives, and his abhorrence of a free press.