It is well and good that historians no longer spend all their efforts relating the glories and trials of political and military leaders. But Patrice Gueniffey believes that heroes still have something to tell us. He contrasts two of them, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle, to better understand how individual exploits have shaped our world.

Patrice Gueniffey is Director of the Raymond Aron Center for Political Research at L¿École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. One of France¿s leading historians of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic ages, he is the author of Bonaparte, the monumental first volume of the definitive modern French biography of Napoleon.