It didn't happen because it was considered too expensive: "In the late 1960s, the studio MGM pulled the plug on what could have been Kubrick's finest work, in part spooked by spiralling budgets (it would have cost $5.2m, around $100m in modern terms)." (How's that for a sharp shock about inflation?)
You won't be picking up this book on a whim (given the fact that it weighs 22 pounds, you may not be picking it up at all). It costs £450 (about $730). It's actually a hollowed-out book with ten volumes within it. It's a limited edition--you can find it at taschen.com.
Some of the revelations about Kubrick's obsession are startling, too: "he took 15,000 photographs of potential locations for Napoleon. His index-card system, which he used to coordinate all his characters' movements so that he knew where each of them was at any one time, ran to 25,000 entries."
