Cartledge has chosen to highlight Alexander the Hunter, the man whose entire life can be explained as a quest for the next quarry. In so doing, Cartledge has produced a book that may be the most accessible introduction in print; though scholars may profit from this study, the general reader out for essential knowledge is particularly well served. He has combed meticulously through the classical sources left to us -- Arrian, Plutarch and Diodorus of Sicily, among others -- and combined them with the recondite cullings of modern scholarship to produce an amazingly solid, balanced and evocative view of the man behind the image on the coins.
— The Washington Post
Alexander the Great's brilliant military campaigns in the fourth century B.C. spread not only his reputation as a heroic and ingenious leader but also the culture of ancient Greece throughout the known world. With his usual riveting storytelling, Cartledge (The Spartans), chair of Cambridge University's classics faculty, narrates Alexander's life and rise to power. Cartledge takes issue with those who contend that Alexander's greatest contribution was to spread Hellenism. He argues instead that Alexander, while sincerely attached to Hellenism, was more concerned with the glory his conquests brought him. Cartledge provides detailed chronicles of Alexander's battles with the Persians, the Tyrians and the Babylonians as he demonstrates the young king's military genius and hunger for success in war. According to Cartledge, Alexander's love of hunting game offers the key to his life and reign. It led him, for example, to successfully adapt for military battles many hunting strategies, such as the surprise attack, a uniquely Alexandrine contribution. A number of appendixes, including a glossary and an extensive bibliography, enhance the book. Cartledge's knack for bringing history to life makes for an absorbing new biography of the legendary Greek leader. 37 b&w illus., 4 maps, 6 battle plans. Agent, Julian Alexander. (Oct. 5) Forecast: Warner Brothers' November 5 release of Alexander the Great, starring Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins, could give this a sales boost. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Cartledge (Greek history, Cambridge Univ.) sees Alexander as "one of those very few genuinely iconic figures, who have both remade the world they knew and constantly inspire us to remake our own worlds." He aims to provide "a book that does full justice to Alexander's extraordinary achievement while respecting the limits of the evidence and of the historian's craft." Ultimately, this work presents not so much a new understanding of Alexander as a provocative survey of how historians have perhaps misunderstood him. Virtually every chronicler who has sought "the historical Alexander" has faced the same dilemma: documentary evidence that, though "quite ample in quantity is poor in quality." In this lucid work, Cartledge's solution is to present these problems of interpretation as clearly as possible, offer his own estimate of Alexander, and conclude with the mild hope that he has achieved his "fairly modest aim of illustrating the sorts of source problems the hunter after the `real' Alexander can encounter." Recommended for academic libraries and for public libraries with an interest in classical studies. Robert C. Jones, Warrensburg, MO Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Master of the Persian Empire at the age of 26, conqueror of Central Asia at 30, dead at 32. Alexander's legend endures, and with very good reason. Writes classicist/biographer Cartledge (Greek History/Chairman of Classics Faculty/Cambridge Univ.; The Spartans, 2003), he "became at various times a hero, a quasi-holy man, a Christian saint, a new Achilles, a philosopher, a scientist, and prophet, and a visionary." But most importantly, he was a warrior. Alexander's victories were by no means inevitable, Cartledge notes, and some came about because Alexander retained certain military innovations of his father, Philip of Macedon, who had conquered much of Greece only a few years before Alexander's time. For instance, the men of the Macedonian army carried their own equipment and supplies, which reduced the size of the baggage train and "rendered distance a negligible factor," allowing that army to range widely. Alexander added a great navy to this army after taking control of Philip's forces upon his father's death-a demise in which, Cartledge more than hints, Alexander may have played an important part: "The charge of patricide can never be proved," he slyly writes, "but that it can be contemplated at all conveys a good notion of the edgy quality of life at the top of Macedonian society." A devoted student of Aristotle's, although he gave the so-called barbarians more credit than did his master, Alexander was the supreme pragmatist: here he allowed the conquered cities of Greece to keep their old democratic governments, there he butchered the satraps of Persia just as an object lesson, for Alexander "did more or less what he wanted" and understood the uses of terror. And what he wanted morethan anything else, it appears, was to conquer the world, drink, and be treated like a god, all of which he accomplished before meeting his own end-perhaps, Cartledge notes, as a victim of poisoning. A literate rendering of Alexander's life, drawing on the most reliable ancient and modern sources. (See also Steven Pressfield's The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great, p. 710.)Agent: Julian Alexander
