The First Total War

Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It

By: David A. Bell

Narrated by: Trenton Bennett

The twentieth century is usually seen as "the century of total war." But as the historian David A. Bell argues in this landmark work, the phenomenon actually began much earlier, in the era of muskets, cannons, and sailing ships—in the age of Napoleon.

In a sweeping, evocative narrative, Bell takes us from campaigns of "extermination" in the blood-soaked fields of western France to savage street fighting in ruined Spanish cities to central European battlefields where tens of thousands died in a single day. Between 1792 and 1815, Europe plunged into an abyss of destruction.

It was during this time, Bell argues, that our modern attitudes toward war were born. Ever since, the dream of perpetual peace and the nightmare of total war have been bound tightly together in the Western world—right down to the present day, in which the hopes for an "end to history" after the cold war quickly gave way to renewed fears of full-scale slaughter.

With a historian's keen insight and a journalist's flair for detail, Bell exposes the surprising parallels between Napoleon's day and our own. The result is a book that is as timely and important as it is unforgettable.

©2007 David A. Bell (P)2023 Tantor

Awful narrator

I don’t like when narrators put on accents. Just cause the guy who said x was French I don’t need to hear a French accent. Especially cus when he said x I’m sure it was IN FRENCH not English! Also the laughing along with the ridiculous examples of the way things were done in the past really put me off,

Great Book Undercut by Narration

Awesome book so far; however, the narrator’s Pepe le Pew pronunciation of French/French accent has me in stitches

Not wild about the narrator.

I’m not sure if it is the fault of the narrator or the director, if there was one, but the occasional sneering laughter of the narrator put me off terribly.

Potted history of the Napoleonic wars

Bell is a mediocre thinker. The book is a patchwork of intellectual, military and social history of France in the Napoleonic period. There are many better written accounts of each of these. Bell never brings these various strands together to demonstrate what was truly revolutionary about wars in that period.