Alexander the Great

Nov 14, 2024 3:50 AM

Author:Robin Lane Fox

Alexander the Great

Tough, resolute, fearless, Alexander was a born warrior and ruler of passionate ambition who understood the intense adventure of conquest and of the unknown. When he died in 323 BC aged thirty-two, his vast empire comprised more than two million square miles, spanning from Greece to India. His achievements were unparalleled - he had excelled as leader to his men, founded eighteen new cities and stamped the face of Greek culture on the ancient East. The myth he created is as potent today as it was in the ancient world. Robin Lane Fox's superb account searches through the mass of conflicting evidence and legend to focus on Alexander as a man of his own time. Combining historical scholarship and acute psychological insight, it brings this colossal figure vividly to life.

Reviews

Intelligent, well-written, informative and funny…A book to chew on, dip into, quote from and exploit in arguments

—— Andrew Marr , Observer

Bursting with good things

—— Daily Telegraph

The scope of his book, and the skill with which he handles generally unreliable sources, is impressive...The accounts of the circumnavigation, the attack on Cadiz and the defeat of the Armada are a comprehensive, and as readable, as any that have yet appeared

—— Brendan King , Literary Review

A great little book about the British obsession with the climate, it's full of fruitful parcels of meteorological lore.

—— Conde Nast Traveller

... The writing possesses an affable charm and Fort has an appealing layman's enthusiasm for the subject.

—— Financial Times Magazine

An entertaining but rigorous antidote to the fast-and-loose-with-the-truth approach.

—— Radio Times

Wonderfully engaging...Tinniswood has brought the Verneys to life in robustly vivid style

—— Guardian

A wonderful group portrait of an eccentric and ill-starred dynasty. Expertly handling the humorous words and unwise deeds of several generations of Verneys, Adrian Tinniswood breathes life into the turbulent history of an entire century

—— Ross King, author of Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling and Brunelleschi's Dome

Adrian Tinniswood's The Verneys takes us on a fascinating grand tour through a world turned upside down. It is an intimate, engaging, and richly rewarding book, showing the seventeenth century in all its splendor and brutality

—— David King, author of When the World Came to Town and Finding Atlantis

How eloquently Mak rails against the alliance of consumerism and bureaucracy! ... He has a great eye for telling detail... Only a powerful, humane and serious mind could give coherence to mass detail which, however arresting piece by piece, would otherwise soon become wearying... as much a journey around Geert Mak's head as it is a journey around Europe

—— Guardian

Fascinating

—— David V Barrett , Independent

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