Heroes and Villains - Softcover

Frank McLynn has over twenty books to his name, including his acclaimed biographies of Napoleon and Richard the Lionhearted. His other books include Richard and John: Kings at War; Villa and Zapata; 1066; Heroes & Villains; and Napoleon: A Biography. McLynn is a graduate of Oxford and London University. He lives in London.

A popular biographer of subjects as diverse as Carl Jung and Emiliano Zapata, McLynn here profiles six sharply contrasting figures, all of interest to military-history readers: Spartacus, Attila the Hun, Hernán Cortés, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Napoléon Bonaparte, and one protagonist of McLynn’s Richard and John (2007), England’s Crusader King Richard the Lionheart. The psychology of each of the six becomes McLynn’s focus, with their military acumen brought forth as evidence of what motivated them. All were able tacticians in battles that made their reputations (e.g., Bonaparte in the 1793 capture of Toulon), but McLynn distinguishes them at the higher levels of strategy. Rating highest the founder of Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate and lowest Attila, McLynn weighs charisma and pathology—most of this group massacred defeated opponents—among other elements in their makeups as warriors. Necessarily speculative in his mind-reading moments, McLynn is nevertheless a lively discussant of these captains, and his rangy opining will encourage his audience toward further historical exploration. --Gilbert Taylor