Virtues of War - A Novel of Alexander the Great by Steven Pressfield

The Virtues of War - A Novel of Alexander the Great, by Steven Pressfield
Release date: October 19, 2004
Publisher: Doubleday
Pages: 368
ISBN: 0385500998

Steven Pressfield's "The Virtues of War - A Novel of Alexander the Great" is a military story about one of the greatest military leaders ever.

"The Virtues of War" tells the story of the obsessed Macedonian leader Alexander the Great from Alexander's own first-person perspective. This enables us to watch Alexander grow older, but continue in his single minded pursuit of conquest. Pressfield's Alexander the Great seems to have just the right amount of introspection for a leader who can not risk letting personal feelings and relationships get in the way of the big picture.

Because of Pressfield's research and his personal knowledge of the military, the details of ancient battles come to life. Pressfield's Alexander the Great takes advantage of instantaneous meteorological events to produce a winning strategy, most spectacularly when he deduced the effect of the wind on projectile weapons during the Battle of the Granicus.

It is not easy to read Pressfield if you're squeamish. The result of battles and warfare is blood, dismemberment, death, and other horrors. Pressfield deals with these results in great detail. So much so that they appear to be the focus of the book.
See Virtues of War discussion.

There are many passages in "The Virtues of War" that suggest a not entirely positive attitude towards war. Pressfield writes: "For all the poets' anthems, war's object is nothing nobler than the imposition of one nation's will upon another by means of force and threat of force. The soldier's job is to kill men." That Alexander the Great comes across as something of an amoral villain-hero does not necessarily suggest a pro-war attitude.

Helen South's review of The Virtues of War.