Alexander at the End of the World

September 1, 2023

Chair of the Classics department at CUNY's Graduate Center, Kousser here covers Alexander the Great's final foray into the Persian Empire. He had already defeated the Persian ruler but wanted to reach the end of the world, pushing his troops unrelentingly on a seven-year march through the empire's eastern reaches that culminated in his death at age 32 in 323 BCE. With a 30,000-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from May 27, 2024
“The last years of Alexander were not just the sordid aftermath of a once impressive career; they were in fact what made him ‘Great,’ ” according to this beguiling biography. Historian Kousser (The Afterlives of Greek Sculpture) argues that, during Alexander’s “quixotic” push eastward after his defeat of the Persian empire in 330 BCE, he experienced a string of “failures” that tempered and matured his outlook. These included his poor handling of mutinies, conspiracies, and the deaths of beloved companions; strategic blundering in response to enemies’ guerilla tactics; and a brush with death on the battlefield. Kousser portrays these setbacks as feeding into Alexander’s larger struggle “com to terms with a world far more complicated than the one in which he was born” as he traveled, and governed, farther from home than people of his era typically ventured. In so doing, Alexander gained an unprecedented glimpse of the way in which human culture varies across vast distances, which altered his political philosophy, Kousser argues; he developed a “hard-won understanding of his enemies and a willingness to compromise” that led to his empire’s most significant legacy, the forging of an “interconnected Hellenistic world” that promoted a new kind of democratic pluralism. Kousser’s novelistic account, with its emphasis on personalities and intrigues, makes for compulsive reading. The result is a fresh and propulsive take on an ancient figure who grappled with how to govern a diverse society.

June 1, 2024
A professor of ancient art and archaeology tracks Alexander III through the last years of his Iranian and Indian campaigns, arguing that this period proved his greatness. Kousser catches up with Alexander the Macedonian king in 330 B.C.E., after four years of wildly successful conquests through Central Asia in pursuit of his rival, Persian Emperor Darius III. Although the Macedonians found the seasoned warrior already assassinated, Alexander resolved to continue his rampage through eastern Persia and down into India for another seven grueling years. The author asks: Why did he press on when his exhausted, devoted army beseeched him to return home, where he could have rested on his laurels and vast riches? Inspired by the Hellenistic ideals taught to him by his early tutor, Aristotle, Alexander chose to embody them. Kousser shows him as a godlike Achilles figure who challenged lions single-handedly, even while he was chided for recklessness by his own men. Although impulsive and quick to anger--e.g., he stabbed his longtime companion Kleitos at a drunken feast, an act he quickly regretted, considering suicide--Alexander evolved as he became more aware of the humanity of the people he conquered. As he pushed his army in pursuit of rogue Persian generals like Bessos through eastern Persia and across the formidable Hindu Kush, he took Persian lovers and a wife, Roxane; assimilated Persian generals into his army; and began to adopt Persian clothes and customs. "The East did not corrupt the Macedonian king," writes the author. "Instead, from the outset he contained within himself the seeds of everything he would one day become." Kousser argues astutely that assimilation and integration with those he conquered would ultimately define his enduring legacy. The text includes maps. A thoughtful, elegant study that sheds new light on an endlessly fascinating historical figure.

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June 1, 2024
Over the course of his brief life, Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, created an empire stretching from the Balkan peninsula south into Egypt and east to the Indian subcontinent. After subduing Darius III's formidable Persian Empire, Alexander led his forces east, searching for Ocean, the body of water that his tutor Aristotle believed encircled the earth. Kousser (The Afterlives of Greek Sculpture, 2017) focuses her biography of Alexander on the conqueror's final seven years, as he drove as far as today's Pakistan before leading his armies back to Macedon. Culture clashes among Alexander's forces led to several mutinous uprisings. Kousser details Alexander's skills at organizing logistical support to keep troops fed, housed, and paid. Alexander's close relationship with Hephaistion, his comrade in arms and beloved intimate, receives appropriate scrutiny, and Hephaistion's death so shortly before Alexander's own echoes Achilles' and Patroclus' stories from Homer's Iliad. Battles are meticulously recounted in all their bloody confusions. Fans of Game of Thrones will find multiple parallels in these ancient war stories that add to their immediacy.

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