A good introductory overview to Alexander the Great. Covers his entire life, conquests, death and his legacy in under 200 pages. Because of the shortness of the book you never get to dive too deep, but it definitely works as an introductory work & a great jumping off point to dive into more sections that interest you.

I picked up this book expecting it to be an interesting and light introduction to Alexander the Great. A few pages in, I encountered too many obvious errors to continue. On page 3, Cantor summarizes the period of classical Greece, describing how the Greek city-states were in a state of perpetual war. He then points out some exceptions to this general rule, saying that,

"One was the period in the later fifth century BC when Athens and Sparta united during the Peloponnesian War against the menace of the Persian Empire coming over from Asia Minor."

As is commonly known, the Peloponnesian War was fought between Athens and Sparta, not against the Persian Empire. In the very next sentence, Cantor goes on to say,

"The alliance of Athens and Sparta defeated the Persians in the famous Battle of Marathon in 490 BC."

This is incorrect. Sparta did not fight in the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians asked Sparta to come to their aid, but the Spartans were observing a religious festival, and set out several days too late, arriving after the battle had already been won. Next sentence:

"After the war had dragged on for almost ten years, the Greeks forced the battle by advancing full force toward the Persian army and surrounding it."

This is clearly a description the Battle of Marathon, but the battle was not fought after the war had dragged on for ten years. Rather, the battle was fought, the Persian army defeated, and then ten years later a new Persian army came back and was once again defeated.
This paragraph goes on to describe the Battle of Marathon, concluding by saying that,

"Phidippides ran the distance of twenty-six mile in three hours (this was the birth of the marathon), delivered the message to the waiting city, then promptly died from overexertion."

Here he is perpetuating an incorrect myth that developed in later Roman times. Phidippides actually ran from Athens to Sparta, and back, to request military assistance against the Persians, and there is no evidence that he died afterwards.

With all of these errors in one paragraph, the accuracy of the rest of this text is called into question. I understand that this is a text on Alexander the Great, not on Classical Greece, but these errors still show a disturbing lack of basic research, which is undeserving of more than a one-star rating.

Good introduction to the not so great Alexander, who you learn throughout the book might not be such a great guy to be friends with. As I was reading this I wondered how much of this ancient history did George RR Martin draw on to create the Game of Thrones world. This is a very good overview of Alexander's march to India and a good bibliography is supplied for further reading if you want to go deeper into Alexander's world.

i learned a lot of war strategy reading this book. I also learned a lot about persian and ancient greek culture. It was very easy to read, and was even great to read aloud to friends on a camping excursion! Norman Cantor put this together wonderfully because it wasn't a long ass biography full of crap no one cares about. it took pieces from those biogrpahies written by other scholars and just explained the interesting stuff. for someone like me who is not a huge history buff this was great! If you have any interest to know what Alexander the Great was like I suggest reading this and then if you're really into him get on board with one of those over-500-pagers! but for me, this was plenty, and it really made me think about the American wars going on right now... in the same area Alexander tried to conquer and he had the same problems we do... funny... we should maybe learn something...

I wanted a brief history and biography or Alexander the Great and I got it. Just didn't expect it to be this short. Nonetheless, I found this to be a solid, little primer on the man.

Ok Alexander conquered the world by his 30s but has he beaten Elden Ring twice