This book offers a fresh perspective on the reign of Alexander the Great. It re-examines Alexander’s military victories and personality, while also exploring the impact of his campaigns on the people he conquered. Alexander’s story, Stephen Harrison argues, is one that includes the vital roles that other figures played in historical events. By considering the social and intellectual currents of the last two decades, Harrison highlights how changing contemporary experiences shape historical interpretations. Moving beyond polarized debates about Alexander, he provides a nuanced discussion of Alexander’s achievements and impact. The book presents an Alexander for the twenty-first century, offering new insights into how and why historical interpretations of him have changed.

The twentieth century and after has seen more than its share of tyrants who have shattered and remade worlds, but here’s the daddy of them all. Pithy, engagingly written and full of sharp insights, Stephen Harrison’s book sees Alexander in the light of modern wars, conquests and genocides. Harrison tells a tale of terrifying violence and war, a psychodrama of massacres, plots and betrayals, driven by visions, dreams and oracles. The Great Man school of history is well and truly dead and buried here: in its place is a despot for our time. Harrison steers deftly through the ruler cult, the paranoia and conspiracies, searching for the real Alexander under the centuries of adulation in western historiography. An Alexander for our time. * Michael Wood, broadcaster and author of In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great *
A sparkling new account of Alexander’s life by Stephen Harrison . . . draws out figures from his life that help paint a more complex picture than other books * Aspects of History *
What is most captivating about the author’s approach is that he keeps history and biography in play, unsettled, open to possibilities that engage every thinking person in the rewriting of history and biography. * The New York Sun *

Stephen Harrison is Lecturer in Ancient History at Swansea University.