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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780553382051
ISBN number: 0553382055
Label: Bantam
Manufacturer: Bantam
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: September 27, 2005
Publishing house: Bantam
Release Date: September 27, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 25593
Studio: Bantam
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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. . . .
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Rated by buyers -
Dear readers don't forget that this book is a novel, historical fiction, and so, to argue about the pros and cons of anything undocumented about Alexander the Great some 2,300 years ago is a bit absurd.
But, let's delve into the absurd anyway. It's almost never disputed yesterday that Alexander was indisputably bi-sexual and perhaps 100% homosexual. He has become a modern day gay icon. Alexander was a man who spent his entire (short) life day-in-day-out exclusively in the intimate company of men.
Yet, Steven Pressfield's "Virtues of War" skirts Alexander's sexual identity with unwelcome obliviousness, except for blunt suggestions and veiled images of intimacy between Alexander and Hephaestion - and other younger men under his careful tutelage. Alexander frequently comments about the astonishing beauty of young men. Pressfield's indirect acknowledgement of Alexander's' homosexuality is this: Hephaestion is mentioned in Alexander's own voice by name and deed approximately 9,000 times in this 350 page novel, in contrast to the scant 200 or 300 words devoted to Alexander's relationship with any woman, including his mother and the 2 women he "married." What price would Pressfield have paid for actual acknowledgement of what everyone actually now understands? No price at all. In fact some good old m2m sex would have given a very welcome and healthy jolt to the painfully over-explained military tactics pages (and pages and pages) to say nothing of the boring lists (and lists and lists) of generals, captains and so on.
Worse yet, Pressfield cheats us when we do not hear -- in Alexander's own voice -- his overwhelming grief and loss when Hephaestion dies, or hear Alexander's own agony and confessions as death overtook him. Why let another narrator in an "epilogue" tell us "about" those crucial moments that would have honestly portrayed the inner Alexander? The terribly disappointing ending of the book is a huge flaw. I really did want to read Alexander's own words, not Itanes, when Hephestion dies, and I really wanted to hear Alexander confess on his death bed that he was homosexual. What a let-down at the end! Yuck!
Two deaths define and punctuate Alexander's life. First was Bucephalus' death - his beloved massive 21-year old horse. Second was Hephaestion's, whose demise literally devastated Alexander, causing a life-changing upheaval and loss, something from which Alexander never recovered. Page 341, "yet, from the death of Hephaestion, he was never the same man." Why? His spouse was dead. Interestingly, the death of his father is almost inconsequential.
But make no mistake. This is an epic novel of epic scope about the epic star-power character of all time. Pressfield shows Alexander as a fascinatingly powerful man, an immense historical figure, the subject of countless literary works. This one - Alexander as the central character in a novel - is excellent. However, there is no denouement, no final crisis, no real mystery, no wonderment, no surprise, and no suspense. Just the end -- before he dies!
Alexander's "daimon," the mystical magical will to fight, his internal warrior persona, his soul and driving conscience and life force, seems never to fail him until near the end when Telemon tells
Alexander, Page 312, "The daimon is inhuman." Indeed it is possible, Pressfield suggests, that the internal Alexander was evil. Such are the things of legends.
The book's structure is excellent with Alexander narrating his own story in very first person - his fictional voice, as he instructs Itanes in the virtues of war. Thus, we are not spared any detail of Alexander's internal musings, his conflicts and motivations (except noted above about his own defining sexuality). The horrors of war back then are spread before us in great detail by Alexander himself. The reader is awe-struck by the logistical accomplishments involved in moving and sustaining an army of hundreds of thousands of men through harsh territory over 8 years and 11,250 miles.
Alexander is brutal and unyielding, brilliant and belligerent, and almost always --with rare exceptions even with all his apparent insight -- fully able, easily and completely, to blame others for his own mistakes, murders and failures -- or the unanticipated consequences of his victories. Page 188, "My envoys sought to make the leading men of Tyre and Gaza see reason; I dispatched letters beneath my own hand. I pledged to make their cities richer, freer, safer. Still they resisted. They compelled me to make examples of them." Thus, he drove his men to the "end of the known world" to further his mega maniacal ambitions, for better or worse. His ability to motivate men to kill for him is astonishing.
To have achieved a readable novel, given a lack of plot or true story line, Pressfield gives us a good read. Not great, but well worth your time, if you are ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
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not sure i will actually get through this book as it is highly technical on the battle strategy and tactics and a little too much in the head of Alexander, which I am not sure how the author got there. There isn't much history written about Alexander's inner thoughts.
Rated by buyers 
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I read Pressfield's Fantastic "Gates of Fire" and this is a close second. I have also read Valario Manfredi's supurb Trilogy on Alexander. This story is even more gripping.
Also to all those who are dissapointed in the non-gayness of this book: There is absolutely no evidence that Alexander had a gay relationship with Hephastion. All that is mentioned by the ancient authors is that they were "philoi." (Greek for Good Friends) The kind of very close friend you have when you know someone from childhood. It was the lesbian Mary Renalt who corrupted Alexander's legacy to be primarily gay. This is bogus. Read the ancient authors such as Plutarch and you will find no evidence of this. Steven Pressfield rightly concentrates on Alexander's great battles, not on prime time tv style gossip. It urks me to no end when people twist facts to fit their own agenda.
Rated by buyers 
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I guess I was spoiled by Mary Renaults Alexander Trilogy. In Pressfields book Alexander as a person just does not resonate. The admixture of modern military terminology and somewhat of a modern outlook does not gell with the historical setting and mindset as it does in Renaults novels. That said, the strength of this book is its battle scenes, and those are very well done indeed. Researchers have found it hard to recreate the actual battles that Alexander fought from the historical accounts - read Arrian for example to see what I mean - and Pressfield has done a great job of creating descriptions of the battles which ring true.
That said, battles do not make up the whole book and the remainder I personally found unsatisfying and not ringing true. Again, I suspect reading Renaults Alexander trilogy many years previously set expectations which its hard for other authors to live up to. It is very hard to get an idea of Alexander as a person from this novel. Seems very stilted overall. I did read the book through but by the end it was more of a struggle than anything else. If you enjoyed this book, take a look at Renaults trilogy, they will fill in a lot of gaps and present a good alternative view - and a far more sympathetic one for that matter.
Rated by buyers -
This superior historical novel really ought to be read before his latest one, _The Afghan Campaign,_ which enlarges on one of Alexander's later campaigns, and from a different perspective -- but they're really two separate narratives, so no harm done if (like me) you read them in reverse order. The narrative is Alexander himself, outlining the history of his conquest of Asia for the benefit of one of the cadets who study military science in the king's tent while on campaign. He begins with his early life and his succession to the throne after the assassination of his father, Philip, himself something of a military genius. But Alexander is a prodigy, being everything his father was and far more, with the ability to look at the ground and foresee the battle that will take place there and to foresee the enemy's battle plan. He also possesses an extreme degree of charisma; his troops adore him, even when (as later in the conquest) they fear his altered personality. By the time the Macedonians have passed through Persia proper and have completely changed their approach to warfare to suit the guerilla action in Afghanistan (the king's doing again), and have reached the frontier of India, they're tired to the soul and want only to return home. But Alexander dreams of standing on the shore of the Eastern Ocean, which he's sure can't be far beyond the Ganges. This is the story of Alexander's mental evolution, from semi-barbarian king holding sway in the remote north of the Greek-speaking lands to Eastern potentate who has acquired a taste for all things Persian. But Pressfield also describes the major battles along the way, especially Gaugamela, in fascinating detail. You can see the action, really see it, and understand why each side does what it does, and why the results are what they are. In that regard, this is almost a classical military science textbook. An excellent piece of work.
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