Elizabeth Duquette has written an ambitious, monumental book that proposes a fundamental reframing of the nineteenth century as the long age of Napoleon. Dislodging "democracy" as the nation's mythic political basis and putting "tyranny" in its place, Duquette amasses a substantial archive of America's obsession with Napoleon Bonaparte to develop a thoroughly convincing account of the multiple tyrannies that stand at the foundation of US political culture-from the actual oppression of slavery to those purported incursions on the liberty of aggrieved elites that form the "tyrannical style" of nineteenth-century political discourse.
Elizabeth Duquette is a Visiting Scholar at Reed College and Professor Emerita of English at Gettysburg College. She is the author of Loyal Subjects: Bonds of Nation, Race, and Allegiance in Nineteenth-Century America (2010). In addition to writing an assortment of articles, she has edited The Gates Ajar (2019) with Claudia Stokes, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps: Selected Tales, Essays, and Poems (2014) with Cheryl Tevlin.