The Economist (US), April 15th, 1989
NAPOLEON III AND HIS CARNIVAL EMPIRE.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, political thinker disastrously turned politician, thought that he and his friends could use Louis Napoleon. Bismarck, who destroyed the man and the empire, thought there was nothing there to use: Louis Napoleon was "a sphinx without a riddle". Undeterred, John Bierman gives a spirited account of the man who ruled France from 1848 to 1870.
Mr Bierman sensibly emphasises Louis Napoleon's precocious grasp of the new mass politics. A genuine populism, proclamations as sonorous as they were empty, and provincial whistle-stop tours won...
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