Dec 12, 2021
“The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great”
Author: Stephen Pressfield
— It is rumored that upon his deathbed in 323 b.c.e, at the age of thirty-two, that Alexander the Great was asked by his Generals who among them should rule over the world which Alexander had conquered. His response, as reported by the author Arrian in the book “The Campaigns of Alexander the Great,” was “…whoever is the strongest.”
Description: “I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. So begins Alexander’s extraordinary confession on the eve of his greatest crisis of leadership. By turns heroic and calculating, compassionate and utterly merciless, Alexander recounts with a warrior’s unflinching eye for detail the blood, the terror, and the tactics of his greatest battlefield victories. Whether surviving his father’s brutal assassination, presiding over a massacre, or weeping at the death of a beloved comrade-in-arms, Alexander never denies the hard realities of the code by which he lives: the virtues of war. But as much as he was feared by his enemies, he was loved and revered by his friends, his generals, and the men who followed him into battle. Often outnumbered, never outfought, Alexander conquered every enemy the world stood against him–but the one he never saw coming. . . .”
