Alexander: The Conqueror

click here for more details, find new or used items	Laura Foreman Our price £13.19 (£19.99) New from £5.92 Used from £2.57 Pages: 212 (Hardcover) ISBN: 0306812932 Pub: Da Capo Press Pub date: 2004-07-28 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 467176

Reader Reviews:

Beautiful book (0/0 people found this helpful)

Firstly, you should be clear about what you're buying here: as the reviewer below has said, this is not either a scholarly work or even a full biography of Alexander (if you want the latter, try Robin Lane Fox), but what it is is a stunning collection of photos and visual images, many of which I hadn't seen before, of Alexander and his world. So if you've read the biographies and histories (or even Mary Renault!) and want to be able to picture the places where Alexander (possibly?) grew up and lived, then this is a superb addition to the standard literature.

Nice pictures shame about the rest (1/1 people found this helpful)

I bought this book as I have done a lot of research into Alexander the Great, and as there are limited original sources its hard to find a new angle. I had read a review of this book and as I've always liked coffee table books to flick through from time to time I purchased with the aim of seeing lots of images, paintings etc.. The first thing that disappointed me was that the front cover had a great big sticker promoting Oliver Stone's movie and when I tried to pull it off it ripped the cover. The second thing is the writing inside, for those of you who were brought in up in the UK its like a Ladybird guide to Alexander. For those of you who don't know Ladybird books they were great little books for teaching kids around 10 about history. Or in other words the text is really not aimed at any serious scholar or at providing any analysis or insight so frankly I think the author would have been better advised to fill it up with more pictures. As for the pictures there are some lovely shots of paintings, scenery and sculptures, which really allow you to see something of what the elusive Alexander might have looked like. So as a coffee table experience the book does work, I would however take marks off for the price, which is quite steep given the relatively small number of pages,and the text which was not inspiring and took up too much place. On the other hand this is the only book I have seen that attempts to capture images on the subject in one place. To anyone who wants to capture the excitement of the Alexander adventure I would still recommend Michael Wood's book/documentary series from the BBC which really gave a feel for what it might have been like.

Categories

Amazon.co.uk places this book into the following categories: