They say you can't truly feel alive unless you've come very close to death. If that's true, then a man who survived sixteen campaigns and forty-eight battles, only to eventually die at the age of 89, could certainly claim to have drained the cup of life to its last drop. Jean-Roch Coignet found himself across the lengths and breadths of Europe, traversing, like his fellow soldiers, vast distances on foot, often under incredibly adverse conditions. He fought in Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia, Belgium, and even outside Paris itself, as Napoleon's star was setting. He was decorated and denounced, starved, poisoned, and dined with aristocrats, kings, and emperors. He witnessed events that changed the course of world history, from the moment as a recruit he saw Napoleon change the regime in France and become the First Consul of the French Republic. At a very advanced age, Coignet decided to recall his tumultuous life and put it on paper, along with it the history of an entire continent. His memoirs reveal unknown aspects of the history of the Napoleonic Wars, their major and minor protagonists, the terrible battles that shook Europe and turned almost all the other states of the Old Continent against France. Even professional historians and scholars of the Napoleonic Wars will find many unknown details of that turbulent era in Coignet's writings. However, The Notebooks of Captain Coignet is such a captivating work that it is bound to capture the interest of any reader. It is a journey back in time, given with disarming honesty and read breathlessly.