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I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. So begins Alexander’s extraordinary confession on the eve of his greatest crisis of leadership. By turns heroic and calculating, compassionate and utterly merciless, Alexander recounts with a warrior’s unflinching eye for detail the blood, the terror, and the tactics of his greatest battlefield victories. Whether surviving his father’s brutal assassination, presiding over a massacre, or weeping at the death of a beloved comrade-in-arms, Alexander never denies the hard realities of the code by which he the virtues of war. But as much as he was feared by his enemies, he was loved and revered by his friends, his generals, and the men who followed him into battle. Often outnumbered, never outfought, Alexander conquered every enemy the world stood against him–but the one he never saw coming. . . .
Publication Year: 2005
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I loved Gates of Fire as much as the next guy, but I didn't connect with The Virtues of War.
While this book delivers what I expect from historical fiction in that it brings historical figures to life, it suffers from the fact that Alexander doesn't make for an interesting protagonist. He's too good at everything, to devoted to goals and ideals the contemporary reader may find alien, to make for an interesting character.
The book does offer in-depth descriptions of battles and battlefield formations for the armchair Iron Age general, but it offers comparatively little for those of us more interested in strategy than tactics.
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