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Nearly 200 years after his death, Napoleon Bonaparte is finally getting the greatest honor our age can bestow: his own theme park. Napoleonland -- stop laughing -- was concocted by a former French minister to rival Disneyland in its immersive fun and totemic cultural status. Shopping! Dining! Re-enactments of the Battle of Austerlitz! Not a bad rehabilitation for an all-conquering megalomaniacal exiled emperor.

Truth be told, there's a serious lesson to be found in the fact that Europe will soon have a Napoleonland -- but never, for instance, a Hitlerworld. Unfortunately, Anglo-Americans are apt to unfavorably compare the head of the First French Empire to the leader of the Third German Reich. "A country which can still partly revere such a man surely has...