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Part forensic investigation, part dramatic jailbreak adventure, Mark Braude's The Invisible Emperor is a gripping narrative history of Napoleon Bonaparte's ten-month exile on the Mediterranean island of ElbaIn the spring of 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated. Having overseen an empire spanning half the European continent and governed the lives of some eighty million people, he suddenly found himself exiled to Elba, less than a hundred square miles of territory. This would have been the end of him, if Europe's rulers had had their way. But soon enough Napoleon imposed his preternatural charisma and historic ambition on both his captors and the very island itself, plotting his return to France and to power. After ten months of exile, he escaped Elba with just of over a thousand supporters in tow, landed near Antibes, marched to Paris, and retook the Tuileries Palace--all without firing a shot.



About the Author

Mark Braude

MARK BRAUDE is a cultural historian and the author of KIKI MAN RAY: ART, LOVE, AND RIVALRY IN 1920S PARIS (W.W. Norton, Summer 2022) , THE INVISIBLE EMPEROR: NAPOLEON ON ELBA FROM EXILE TO ESCAPE (Penguin Press, 2018) , and MAKING MONTE CARLO: A HISTORY OF SPECULATION AND SPECTACLE (Simon & Schuster, 2016) . His books have been translated into several languages. Mark was a 2020 visiting fellow at the American Library in Paris and was named a 2017 NEH Public Scholar. He is the recipient of grants from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, the de Groot Foundation, and others. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) and a lecturer in Stanford's departments of Art History, French, and History. Mark was born in Vancouver and went to college at the University of British Columbia. He received an MA from NYU's Institute of French Studies and a PhD in History and Visual Studies from USC. He has written for The Globe and Mail, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and others. He lives in Vancouver with his wife and their two daughters.



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