Status Updates From The Man Who Ate the Zoo: Fr...

If the Emperor Napoleon, when on the road to Moscow with his army in 1812, had condescended to observe the flights of storks and cranes passing over his fated battalions, subsequent events in the politics of Europe might have been very different. These storks and cranes knew of the coming on of a great and terrible winter, the birds hastened towards the south, Napoleon and his army towards the north.

This is a badly written and badly edited book, and the words are: needless digression. Huge chunks of text could have been trimmed by the simple question of "so what?", a simple question this writer seems to never have asked about his tiresome prose. Many historical texts written by pedants read more substantially and smoothly than this. I'm not sure what is exactly "popular" about such an odious genre.

Sure, i get it. You need to "historically contextualise". But spending 3-4 pages talking about things that are only distantly linked to the point you're trying to make reads more like lazy editing, excess, and lost-the-plot than "historicizing". Frustrating reading. Can't wait to be done with this book.