Napoleon was not unusually short for his time

One of the book's signature debunkings targets the enduring image of Napoleon Bonaparte as a notably short man overcompensating with ambition — the so-called "Napoleon complex." The authors trace this myth largely to British wartime propaganda cartoons that caricatured him as diminutive to mock his stature and undercut his menace, along with a confusion between French and English measurement units of the era. By the more reliable accounts and measurements available, Napoleon stood at roughly average height for a Frenchman of his period, not conspicuously short at all. The myth persisted because it fit a satisfying psychological narrative — the small man driven to conquer the world to compensate for physical inadequacy — regardless of whether it was true. The authors use this as an example of how a politically motivated caricature, repeated enough times across generations of retelling, can permanently overwrite accurate historical fact in popular memory, becoming more "true" through repetition than the original documented reality ever was. Takeaway: A useful insult can outlive the facts it was based on by centuries.