Dictionary of Napoleonic Wars - Hardcover

Stephen Pope is co author of A Dictionary of the Third Reich (Grafton, 1987), A Dictionary of the First World War (Macmillan, 1995), A Dictionary of the Second World War and The Green Book (Hodder, 1991). The consultant editor is Keith Robbins of the University of Wales. He is a former editor of History magazine.

Pope is a former Oxford modern-history scholar who has authored four well-received reference books dealing with history. This present book, first published last year in Great Britain, covers the Napoleonic Wars from 1792 through 1815.Following a lengthy introduction, the bulk of the text is arranged in a dictionary format with more than 1,000 entries. Wide-ranging entries for home fronts, theaters of war, and wars themselves may be several pages in length. Midlength entries cover particular offensives, tactics, types of weapons, armed forces, and so on, while the shortest entries generally survey specific events, leaders, and weapons. A vast number of cross-references designated in small bold print refer users to related topics. There are no illustrations in the text, but 30 maps at the back of the book depict geographic areas and battle plans. These black-and-white maps vary from a half to a full page in size. Preceding the maps is a 12-page chronology covering 1792 to 1815. There are no bibliographies or bibliographic citations.David Chandler's Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars (Wordsworth, 1999) is the only truly comparable resource. Both works have approximately the same number of entries, although Pope has a slight edge in numbers. Chandler has a substantial bibliography and many illustrations, both lacking in Pope, along with almost three times as many maps and battle plans. For these reasons, Chandler will be more useful for scholars, although Pope is an excellently designed work and would be a worthwhile addition to academic and public libraries. RBB
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