Alexander the Great – Journey to the End of the Earth by Norman F. Cantor

Perhaps if you're new to the topic, this book will be a good starting point. Norman F Cantor has a fairly chatty style in Alexander the Great – Journey to the End of the Earth, but I found him annoying at times in his poking, ahem, at the nature of Alexander's relationship with Hephaestion and Alexander's (and the men at the time's) sexuality in general. Who cares? They weren't haunted by the ghosts of Victorian prudery back then.

This isn't an expansive volume, so if you're looking for a read/listen with more meat on its bones, then rather go elsewhere. I had this as part of my Audible subscription and wasn't too wild about the overall (lack of) production value. Things got a bit patchy, which is kinda sad considering this is such a short read.

I did gain an idea of the brutality of the lives of the Macedonians of this age, however. There was a whole lot of drinking, boinking, and killing, and the picture that Cantor paints is of a emperor who, as his conquests mount up, and he gets further and further away from home in both physical and metaphorical sense, grows more and more paranoid and delusional. I'm reminded of that little quip from Highlander where the Kurgan tells Connor, "It's better to burn out than to fade away" – which in this case most certainly applies to Alexander.

Other reviewers with a little more historical smarts than me have also pointed out that Cantor makes a bunch of errors that were not caught by any editor, but considering that I have the attention span of a goldfish, I didn't pick up these incorrect historical details. So my caution is to keep this in mind, should you pick up a copy. And if in doubt, cross reference.

Did I enjoy this book? Yeah, it was pretty good. I'm currently indulging in a pile of research about ancient times for my own work, so it's good to immerse. This was a fair to middling read/listen, but I've been reliably told that there are better works out there that go into far more detail.