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    The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army
    Unavailable
    The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army
    Unavailable
    The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army

    Written by Stephan Talty

    Narrated by Stephen Hoye

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "Gripping . . . a compelling story of personal hubris and humbling defeat."
    -Jack Weatherford, author of the New York Times bestseller Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

    In a masterful dual narrative that pits the heights of human ambition and achievement against the supremacy of nature, New York Times bestselling author Stephan Talty tells the story of a mighty ruler and a tiny microbe, antagonists whose struggle would shape the modern world.

    In the spring of 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte was at the height of his powers. Forty-five million called him emperor, and he commanded a nation that was the richest, most cultured, and advanced on earth. No army could stand against his impeccably trained, brilliantly led forces, and his continued sweep across Europe seemed inevitable.

    Early that year, bolstered by his successes, Napoleon turned his attentions toward Moscow, helming the largest invasion in human history. Surely, Tsar Alexander's outnumbered troops would crumble against this mighty force.

    But another powerful and ancient enemy awaited Napoleon's men in the Russian steppes. Virulent and swift, this microscopic foe would bring the emperor to his knees.

    Even as the Russians retreated before him in disarray, Napoleon found his army disappearing, his frantic doctors powerless to explain what had struck down a hundred thousand soldiers. The emperor's vaunted military brilliance suddenly seemed useless, and when the Russians put their own occupied capital to the torch, the campaign became a desperate race through the frozen landscape as troops continued to die by the thousands. Through it all, with tragic heroism, Napoleon's disease-ravaged, freezing, starving men somehow rallied, again and again, to cries of "Vive l'Empereur!"

    Yet Talty's sweeping tale takes us far beyond the doomed heroics and bloody clashes of the battlefield. The Illustrious Dead delves deep into the origins of the pathogen that finally ended the mighty emperor's dreams of world conquest and exposes this "war plague's" hidden role throughout history. A tale of two unstoppable forces meeting on the road to Moscow in an epic clash of killer microbe and peerless army, The Illustrious Dead is a historical whodunit in which a million lives hang in the balance.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJun 2, 2009
    ISBN9780739383506
    Unavailable
    The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army
    Author

    Stephan Talty

    Stephan Talty is the New York Times bestselling author of The Black Hand, The Good Assassin, Agent Garbo, and A Captain’s Duty. His books have been made into two films, the Oscar-winning Captain Phillips and Only the Brave. He’s written for publications including the New York Times Magazine, GQ, and Playboy. He lives outside New York City with his family.

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