Napoleon and Wellington: The Battle of Waterloo and the Great Commanders Who Fought It

By Andrew Roberts. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-2832-4.

Napoleon and Wellington probably are two of the most written about and most romanticized military figures of the past 200 years. And the battle of Waterloo, in which the two generals fought, often is described as the most pivotal battle in European history. This battle and its leaders are the subjects of Andrew Roberts’ refreshingly original and entertaining description of Napoleonic warfare, focusing on the abilities, flaws, and fates that brought these men together June 18, 1815.

Roberts is a Napoleonic scholar with a keen eye for worthy detail and sharp anecdotes. He also has written The House of Windsor: A Royal History of England (University of California Press, 2000). His new work is an expansive study, almost a dual biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, and Sir Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. It traces the personal and professional lives of both men as well as the military and political events that resulted in their meeting at Waterloo. 

Roberts reveals that Napoleon and Wellington had as much in common as they did in opposition. Born in the same year, 1769, they both studied the campaigns of Hannibal and Caesar, both were autodidacts, both were aided in their careers by an influential brother, both had unhappy marriages, and both were adept at topography and mathematics. 

However, Wellington was a genius with the use of terrain and a careful attention to logistics, while Napoleon became surprisingly unimaginative tactically. 

Roberts tells of Napoleon’s amazing rise to power from 1796 to 1815, how he conquered most of Europe, and how he lost it all. Roberts describes Wellington’s slow start as a junior officer who showed “little capacity for anything worthwhile,” his later military successes in India and Spain, and his appointment to command all the Anglo-Allied forces at Waterloo.

The author offers compelling descriptions of the battle of Waterloo, revealing the battle’s complexities and reliance on good luck and bad decisions. This is a grand adventure story, ably supplemented with excellent maps. 

Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History By George Crile. 

Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 0-87113-854-9.

As a Democratic congressman from east Texas, Charlie Wilson was known as a “hopelessly irresponsible public servant,” according to author George Crile. Wilson also was obsessed with killing Russians and turning their invasion of Afghanistan into their Vietnam. 

Charlie Wilson’s War is Crile’s penetrating exposé of how a single congressman and a cabal of wild CIA agents managed to turn the Russians’ Afghan War (1980-1989) into a stunning military defeat that greatly contributed to the final economic, moral, and political collapse of the Soviet Union.

Crile is a producer for CBS’ “60 Minutes” television news program, and this is his first book. He has worked on this story for 15 years, compiling a remarkable tale of personal excess, political skill, and bold vision that resulted in “the biggest and most successful CIA campaign in history.”

As Crile relates in his book, Wilson was a fervent anticommunist who saw the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as the perfect opportunity to confront the Russians in a final, climactic battle of the Cold War. Wilson sat on both the House Appropriations Committee and the Subcommittee for Defense Appropriations, making him “the one with the authority to dispense hundreds of millions of dollars for killing Russians.”

Using his power, influence, political skills, and congressional bankroll, Wilson conspired with an irreverent CIA case officer named Gust Avrakotos to supply hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons, ammunition, supplies, and training to the Afghan freedom fighters. The story of the maneuvering, scheming, and off-the-books activities of these two free spirits is amazing, entertaining, and just a little bit scary.

Wilson and Avrakotos seemed the two least likely to pull off this major caper. According to Crile, Wilson was an outrageous party animal, a flamboyant, hard-drinking womanizer who flouted congressional rules and spent other people’s money lavishly. Avrakotos was an unconventional, back-alley agent who never met an agency rule he would not break, who insulted his bosses, and who hated the bureaucratic, Ivy League “cake eaters” who ran the CIA. 

Crile tells how Wilson and Avrakotos convinced the Pakistanis to provide all the in-country support for CIA activities, both Israel and Egypt to provide weapons through the CIA, and Saudi Arabia to provide matching funds for every U.S. dollar spent on the Afghan war.

He also relates hilarious and revealing anecdotes about Wilson’s female congressional staff, known as Charlie’s Angels, his numerous beauty queen girlfriends, and how he once took his own personal belly dancer on a government trip to Pakistan. Avrakotos was an equally colorful character who delighted in field work and took every opportunity to defy and annoy his CIA bosses. 

This story may seem unbelievable, but according to Crile it all is true. 

— Reviews by William D. Bushnell