Alexander the Great

by Maureen Ash

Traces the life of the warrior king of Macedonia who conquered and united the known world of his time. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0516030639
• ISBN13: 9780516030630
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Children's Press(CT)
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 1.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.3" x 9.6"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

Alexander the Great carves out an empire of many faces

It is strange to think about Alexander the Great in the same category with Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, and Henry Stanley, but that is supposed to be the perspective of this volume in the World's Great Explorers series. Yet in her first chapter introducing her young readers to the "Man of Many Legends," Maureen Ash establishes Alexander the Great as a conqueror who encouraged the exchange of ideas between the various people he came to rule when he conquered most of the world that was known to them. Ultimately, those who read this book will understand how Alexander did not so much explorer the world as he did change it.Ash devotes chapters to how Alexander was raised as the heir to King Phillip II of Macedon and how he subdued the Greek states following his father's assassination, then moving on to the invasion of Persia, the defeat of the Persians and the siege of Tyre, extending his empire to Egypt, invading India, and his death at the age of 33 after carving out an "Empire of Many Faces." The volume is illustrated with lots of etchings, drawings, and paintings that originally had to be in books that were published several decades before the teachers of the students that will be checking out this book for class. With blockbuster films on Alexander the Great coming out in the next couple of years he is going to enjoy a revival of interest in his life and times, the same way that the current film "Troy" has students wanting to know more about Achilles and the writings of Homer. What will make Ash's book of value to them is not the idea that Alexander the Great was also one of the world's great explorers but rather than he was arguably the first significant person to embrace cultural diversity. You can even make a case based on what you read here that his empire was the first attempt to create a "melting pot."