This is the definitive biography, and the first in twenty years, of Louis-Napoléon III, whose controversial achievements have notoriously divided historians. Here, pre-eminent Napoléon Bonaparte expert and Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian Alan Strauss-Schom focuses on his successor Louis-Napoléon, overshadowed for too long by his more romanticized forebear. Strauss-Schom employs years of primary source research to explore the massive cultural, social, economical, financial, international, and military impact of France's most polarizing emperor. Louis-Napoléon completely revolutionized the state and the economy, but amid gross financial scandals. His expansion of the French Empire was praised by the French military and resisted by the socialists. He expanded the railways to rival England's; created new transoceanic steamship lines and a modern navy; introduced a new banking sector supported by seemingly unlimited venture capital; and even oversaw the creation of the first large department stores. Napoléon III wanted to surpass the legacy of his famous uncle, Napoléon I. In The Shadow Emperor, Alan Strauss-Schom sets out his true legacy.