Napoleon's Glance: The Secret of Strategy (Nation Books) - Hardcover

Duggan, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1560254572 ISBN 13: 9781560254577

Publisher: Nation Books, 2003

Synopsis

In Napoleon's Glance William Duggan discovers the secret of Napoleon's success—coup d'oeil (pronounced koo-DOY) meaning a stroke of the eye, or "glance": a sudden insight that shows you what course of action to take. It comes from knowledge of the past: You draw on what worked in other situations, in a new combination that fits the problem at hand. Napoleon's Glance—probably the first book to link Napoleon's victories to Picasso's development as an artist!—tells how 10 great strategists owed their success to coup d'oeil. All 10 applied it with great effort and risk and no guarantee it would work. But in case after case, we find the same story: How American women won the vote. How General Patton became the most successful Allied general on the Western Front of World War II. How Joan of Arc saved France from certain conquest by England. How in one generation Japan went from a peasant backwater to an industrial giant. How Picasso became the leading artist of the twentieth century. Though there have been scores of books written about Napoleon, this is the first popular book written for the general reader about his military strategy.

About this title

About the Author:

William Duggan is the author of two acclaimed novels of Africa, The Great Thirst and Lovers of the African Night; a historical study of economic development in Africa; and a forthcoming scholarly study of strategy, The Art of What Works. He has a Ph.D. from Columbia University and teaches strategy there. He is co-founder of Creative Strategy Group, which helps organizations and individuals apply the lessons of Napoleon's Glance to whatever they do.

From Publishers Weekly:

The title may draw in people with a weakness for military models for civilian planning issues, but, unlike Duggan's The Art of What Works, the book is not really a planner's how-to, nor is it conventional military historiography. Instead, Duggan offers clear perspectives on how various traits-e.g. mental flexibility in reading the past and present, talent for envisioning the efforts of tens to millions, minute adjustment of tactical details-have been put to careful use by particular figures. Beyond that, it is a mixed bag. Duggan oversimplifies the military strategists he covers (Napoleon and Patton) with a dichotomy between the approaches of Clausewitz (flexible) and Jomini (rigid), leaving out, for example, the crucial role of staffs. On Sundiata (it is a nice surprise to find him here), the founder of the Mali Empire in Africa, the author lists only a single source. Also here are Alice Paul, the American suffragist, and Ella Baker, one of the founders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Joan of Arc was herself only a very short-lived strategist, drawing her insights from the legend of the Quest for the Grail-but watching her in action inspired the French statesmen and soldiers who won the Hundred Years' War. The best essay in the book, the study of Mohammed Yunus's Grameen Bank making micro-loans in Bangladesh, reflects the author's background in international development with the Ford Foundation.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Nation Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1560254572
• ISBN 13: 9781560254577
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 300