Alexander Mikaberidze is Professor of History and Ruth Herrin Noel Endowed Chair at Louisiana State University-Shreveport. He holds a degree in international law from Tbilisi State University and a Ph.D. in history from Florida State University. An expert on the Napoleonic Wars, Dr. Mikaberidze has written and edited over two dozen books, including multi-volume series on the Russian eyewitness accounts of the Napoleonic Wars and a trilogy on the decisive moments of the Russian Campaign of 1812: Napoleon versus Kutuzov: The Battle of Borodino (2007), Napoleon's Trial by Fire: The Burning of Moscow (2014) and Napoleon's Great Escape: The Battle on the Berezina (2010). His latest book, on the global impact of the Napoleonic Wars, is The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History (2020). He is currently one of the editors of the multi-volume Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars.
Accessible and impressively researched, this sweeping biography unearths the real man behind a national symbol. Readers of European military history will be enthralled. * PublishersWeekly.com * Mikhail Kutuzov has had more than his share of hagiographers and debunkers. Alexander Mikaberidze has produced a detailed, fascinating, and well-written biography of one of Russia's most famous generals that draws on an immense range of sources, conveys a sense both of the general and the man, and provides fair and considered judgments on the most controversial moments in his career. * Dominic Lieven * Drawing on a vast array of sources and written in a lively, engaging style, Alexander Mikaberidze's biography of Kutuzov conveys the drama of the great field marshal's life and career, offering a sweeping panorama of society, politics, culture, foreign relations, and war in tsarist Russia in the age of the French Revolution and Napoleon. An impressive accomplishment. * Alexander Martin, author of The Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars: One Family's Odyssey * Iconic military leader, trusted diplomat, skilled administrator, and loving family man Mikhail Kutuzov at last has received his historical due. Mikaberidze's sparkling prose, rigorous research, deep knowledge, and panoramic narrative free the field marshal from the mythmaking of earlier scholarship. At once erudite and riveting, this highly original account of Kutuzov's monumental life movingly conveys the drama, suffering, and endless striving that defined one of the foundational periods in modern world history. * Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, author of From Victory to Peace: Russian Diplomacy after Napoleon * Lazy, gluttonous, cunning, brave, pious, courtly, and coarse, Kutuzov enraged his detractors, enthralled his admirers, and strangled his enemies in silky webs of bureaucratic intrigue. He destroyed Napoleon's Grand Army in Russia, was intimately portrayed by Tolstoy, and later lionized by Stalin and Putin. He has needed a discerning biography since his death in 1813. Alexander Mikaberidze has given us one, at last. Kutuzov conveys the sweep, color, and controversy of the field marshal's epic life. * Geoffrey Wawro, author of A Mad Catastrophe and The Franco-Prussian War *