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The French Empire was at its height. Napoleon Bonaparte had vanquished most of continental Europe; now, in 1812, the self-crowned emperor set out to conquer Russia. Angered by czarist actions, he organized the best-trained, best-equipped land army ever assembled. With his aptly named, 700,000-man Grande Armee, he began his march towards Moscow. At that point, the grandeur stops and the terror begins. Stephan Talty's The Illustrious Dead etches a picture of war far different from standard Napoleonic histories. He demonstrates convincingly that the brilliant French military strategist was defeated not by enemy armies, but by typhus, tiny bacterium transmitted in the feces of fleas and lice. During the ill-fated campaign, he notes, more troops died from disease than from battle. This account is so gripping that like the best histories, it cuts across subjects.