The French have a term for weighty tomes of scholarship: gros pavés or paving stones. Alexander Mikaberidze has landed his own gros pavé, an extraordinary account of the Napoleonic Wars of 1799–1815 in almost one thousand pages, based on an awe-inspiring knowledge of military and political history and a facility in at least half a dozen languages. The scale of his knowledge is breathtaking.

Mikaberidze grew up in the Republic of Georgia as it transitioned from the collapsing Soviet regime to independence. After a short career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia (1996–2000), he moved to the United States in 2000 to pursue his passion – studying the Napoleonic era. Now a historian at Louisiana State University and still in his early forties, he is a prodigiously productive author, with more than a score of books on the military history of Europe and the Middle East during those years.