n his foreword to this carefully documented biography the English author states that ""at a conservative estimate three lies ... two by her enemies and one by her friends .."" were told about the Empress Eugenie for each day of her life of more than 94 years. Endeavoring ""to present a more truthful picture"", the author here paints a glowing portrait of the beautiful and gifted Empress and of her philandering and unbeautiful husband, the Emperor Napoleon III; he tells also of the rise and fall of the Second Empire and of the European scene during this era. Born in 1826 of a noble Spanish family, Eugenic Montijo, and incredibly lovely, was married in 1852 to Napoleon III and also to his Second Empire, helping him rule, establishing a famous court, enduring his infidelities. With the Emperor she meddled in European politics; her efforts to establish a French empire in Mexico ended in 1866 with the execution of the Emperor Maximilian, whom she had herself sent there. The Second Empire itself collapsed in 1870, after the capture of Napoleon III at the battle of Sedan by Bismarck, and his imprisonment at Metz. Eugenie, escaping to England, was later joined by her husband, who died in 1873, and by her son, the Prince Imperial, killed in the Zulu War in 1878; she herself, still adored and hated, died in Spain in 1920. Containing much previously unpublished material, this lengthy and laudatory book will appeal to students of the Second Empire and 19th-century European politics; readers lacking a basic knowledge of the era my find it confusing.