Alexander the Great (356-332 B.C.) ascended to the throne of Macedon at the age of only 19. He fought his greatest battles - including the conquest of the mighty Persian Empire - before he was 25. He died at the age of 33, undefeated by any enemy. His reputation as a supreme warrior and leader of men is unsurpassed in the annals of history.
Narrated in the brilliantly imagined first-person voice of Alexander himself, Steven Pressfield's new novel brings to life the epic battles, the unerring command of his forces, and the passions and ambitions that drove arguably the greatest commander the world has ever known and paints a full-blooded, multi-dimensional portrait of this complex character.
Alexander was a fearless commander who moved with such daring and speed that no army could withstand him; a driven leader whose ambitions knew no limits; and a man with boundless compassion for his troops, deep friendships with his generals, and profound respect for his enemies. Yet in the end, his noble qualities were subsumed by his insatiable lust for glory.
No one evokes the ancient battlefield as brilliantly as Pressfield and in this book, he vividly describes the seminal confrontations of Alexander's career, the tactics and the blood, heat, and terror of man-to-man combat in the ancient world. He follows Alexander's forces as they faced and defeated armies that far outnumbered them - from a thrilling frontline report from Gaugamela, the scene of Alexander's greatest victory, to the moving, agonising moment that brought the great conqueror to a halt - not as a result of any enemy but by the refusal of his exhausted troops to march any further . . .
Here then are the glory and the gore, the passion and the pageantry, the agony and the ecstasy of the life and times of Alexander the Great, as envisioned and brought to brilliant, bloody and utterly unputdownable life by Steven Pressfield! Epic in scope and magisterial in tone, 'Alexander: The Virtues Of War' is sure to take its place among the classics of historical fiction.