[.ca] Alexander The Great (ISBN 0143035134)

Very Well Written:
R.L. Fox does a wonderful job of weaving his story of Alexander with a mix of interesting anecdotes, balanced intepretations and a critical weighing of classical literature and accounts of Alexander's life. There are few people who have so long held the Western imagination as Alexander and there has been left a myriad of references, biographies, opinions and pamphlets written about him for the past 2300 years. With so much fact and fiction, Fox deftly guides the reader not only through his childhood and conquests, but also briefly outlines some of the major conflicts in the literature and speculation about Alexander's character and major decisions. Fox is equally apt to the task of describing the world, both mythological and political into which Alexander would enter upon following his first footsteps at Troy, giving a solid background to readers who may only have a basic familiarity to the classical world. Fox's gift of description and mellifluousness ties into this book's most glaring weakness, which is perhaps more the fault of its publisher - the lack of maps and their poor formatting. Much of Alexander's feats in Iran and the Punjab are left to the imagination. Countless rivers, cities, place names and engagements that are described with such detail have no secondary visual representation. Some maps also use a topographical shading format which seems to be most effective in obscuring place names that occupy the same space.

Great work of a Great man:
I devoured "The Unauthorized Version" and "Pagans and Christians", two towering works by the same author at a later period in his life. This work on Alexander gives us a glimpse of the evolution of Fox's writing as well as his insights and conclusions on the subject which are still fresh and surprisingly valid after all these years. As usual, Fox examines and refers to numerous ancient document, customs of the times, differences in languages and somehow makes clear to the reader even the most confusing of subjects, such as the interplay between clans, tribes, family and nationalities. What is so remarkable about this writing is the universal quality of the prose along with the surprising but perfectly valid conclusions. Many historians seem afraid to offer conjecture or opinions but Fox has deliberately gone out on a limb several times - for example, his conclusion that John, the last Gospel penned, was actually the closest to the original sources. In this book we are given a picture of the life and times of one of the most influential person in history - as much for what he stood for as what he accomplished. This is history at its finest.

An excellent, balanced biography:
Robin Lane Fox was only 27 when he wrote his biography of Alexander, but it's twice as good as many Alexander biographies written by authors who were twice Fox's age. Fox was a very young Oxford don when he researched and wrote this book, and his immaturity shows in a few spots when he makes assertions that seem to be based on "because I said so". But overall, it's a very, very well-researched and well-written biography that presents Alexander in a balanced light, being neither hagiography nor hatchet-job. It should be mentioned here that Fox's speculation that Philip's murder was probably masterminded by his wife Olympias was not original; it's specifically outlined in Mary Renault's "Fire From Heaven" and Renault is mentioned more than once as a resource in Fox's biography. (One might wonder why a biographer would list a historical novelist as a resource, but Renault scrupulously researched her own novels for historical accuracy before she published them.) The one jarring note in this book is Fox's substituting modern place names for historical names; it may be easier to look them up on a map but unless you already know that Ekbatana is the modern-day Hamadan, it gets a tad confusing. However, this is a minor cavil. Fox writes extremely well; his style carries you right along in the narrative, and there are voluminous footnotes for reference at the end of the book. One comes away somewhat awed that someone so young could have written such an excellent biography on one of history's most towering figures.

Like a trip through the Makran:
Try as I might, I cannot bring myself to give Fox's treatment of Alexander the lavish four and five stars that others have given. It's not that there aren't some qualities here worthy of praise, it's that there is far too much that detracts from the enjoyment. This is the first biography of Alexander I have read, so I'm in no position to compare it to others out there. I can say, however, that Fox succeeds marvelously in bringing geography to life. Despite reading countless books about events in the Middle East, I never truly appreciated how formidable the climate there is until reading Fox. Fox presents a picture that is literally Alexander against the world - against deserts, mountains, heat, cold, snakes, and disease. For this alone, Fox's biography of Alexander is worth reading. I can think of no other historian who so skilfully matches events to geography. Alas, there are some daunting downsides. While Fox's descriptions of geographic features are amazing, his maps are terrible. This is not entirely his fault; much of the blame lies with the black-and-white reprint. But even putting that aside, the maps given do not completely follow the text and are too few and too far spaced through the book to be much use. Far better to put several maps in one place at the beginning or end of the book for ease of reference. Too, Fox has a depressing tendency to talk in circles for pages on end, retelling the same event over and over and over with slight variations, then giving his own conclusions that sound an awful lot like the original version of the story presented pages before. The effect is to make the reader all the more sympathetic with Alexander's soldiers as they marched through the Makran desert; like them, the reader becomes opressed by the thought that the journey will never end, no matter how worthwhile the result will be.

A good look at both the author and his subject:
I devoured "The Unauthorized Version" and "Pagans and Christians", two towering works by the same author at a later period in his life. This work on Alexander gives us a glimpse of the evolution of Fox's writing as well as his views on the subject which are still fresh and surprisingly valid after all these years. As usual, Fox examines and refers to numerous ancient document, customs of the times, differences in languages and somehow makes clear to the reader even the most confusing of subjects, such as the interplay between clans, tribes, family and nationalities. What is so remarkable about this writing is the universal quality of the prose along with the surprising but perfectly valid conclusions. Many historians seem afraid to offer conjecture or opinions but Fox has deliberately gone out on a limb several times - for example, his conclusion that John, the last Gospel penned, was actually the closest to the the original sources. In this book we are given a picture of the life and times of one of the most influential person in history - as much for what he stood for as what he accomplished. This is history at its finest.