Alexander The Great

Alexander of Macedon became king at twenty and, within little more than a decade, shattered the Persian Empire, marched his armies from Greece to India, founded cities, defeated kings, survived sieges and wounds, and built one of the largest empires the ancient world had ever seen. But behind the legend stood a far more complicated man: a brilliant commander driven by relentless ambition, capable of remarkable mercy and devastating brutality, increasingly caught between Macedonian tradition and the imperial world he had conquered. From the Granicus and Issus to Tyre, Gaugamela, Persepolis, the Hindu Kush, and the Hydaspes, this book follows Alexander's extraordinary rise, the army and generals who made his victories possible, the enemies who resisted him, and the political system that began to fracture almost immediately after his death. Drawing carefully on the ancient sources while separating evidence from legend, it tells the story of conquest at its most spectacular and asks the question that has followed Alexander for more than two thousand years: what did it truly mean to be Great?