Alexander the Great

From the Danube River to the Arabian Sea, from the western deserts of Egypt across what is now modern Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and on into India--in 12 short years during the fourth century B.C.--Alexander the Great conquered lands and amassed an empire unparalleled in history. Reading with British ease and assurance, narrator John Lee examines how Alexander used a love of hunting and horses to develop cavalry, siege, and battle strategies that forever changed the course of warfare and civilization. A fascinating final chapter lists the endeavors of subsequent conquerors and kings who emulated Alexander. For this chapter Lee's tone--which projects a kind of verbal wink--acknowledges that Alexander's accomplishments were a near-impossible act to follow. B.P. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine


Balance is the defining feature of this first-rate audiobook history of the life and mysterious death of Alexander the Great, a story now 23 centuries old. Anthony Everitt is one of our most reliable and accessible classical historians, and John Lee, as he's demonstrated so many times, is the most compatible of narrators, a distinctive, compelling voice with the uncanny ability to blend into a narrative. Author and narrator understand perfectly the power of restraint, and the suspense inherent in the slow, steady gathering of detail. Here, where romance and legend weigh against modern research and archaeological methods, this greatest of history's adventure stories unfolds with a freshness and clarity rarely experienced in the biography of an ancient figure. D.A.W. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine