Yet even that angry authorâ??s indictment of Alexander the Great by recounting the wars fought between his successors could not conceal the fact that those successors were Macedonianâ??that for centuries Macedonians of Greek speech and culture ruled most of the realm Alexander conquered from what is now western Turkey to what is now Pakistan. The Macedonian achievement in establishing long-term, stable rule over bloodied and alien extentsâ??even over districts through which Alexander himself merely galloped, and where few Macedonians were left behind to sniff the ozone of his thunderboltâ??is one of the abiding marvels of history.
To Alexanderâ??s conquests and their legacy, Philip Freemanâ??s new Alexander the Great is a more useful guide. Born of the authorâ??s own wonder at the achievements of the greatest soldier in the history of the West, Freemanâ??s book has, unlike Alexander the Great Failure, no tedious political agenda. Clear, concise, stripped-down, and in prose with little unnecessary ornament, it does not soar and wheel like Robin Lane Foxâ??s immortal Alexander the Great, perhaps the best-written book on ancient history since Gibbon, but neither does it creep and grovel and seek ticks in its tail like Alexander the Great Failure. In his choice of anecdoteâ??a historian of Alexander must decide how many of the countless stories told about Alexander to believe and recountâ??Freeman uses a sieve neither so generous as to try the readerâ??s credulity nor so stingy as to deny the reader the storyâ??s joy.
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