He was a realist and a romantic, a lover of strong women and beautiful men. And though he was in his day the richest, most powerful man in the world, his most prized possession was a book – Homer’s “The Iliad,” annotated by his tutor, Aristotle.
Most of all, he was as much a myth as a man and a mystery – even to himself.
When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 B.C. – a month shy of his 33rd birthday – after conquering and reordering Persia, he left a sprawling empire and a burning question: What drove him?
It’s a question I explore in “Daimon: A Novel of Alexander the Great” (Nov. 30, JMS Books), the latest entry in my series “The Games Men Play” and its first historical subject.
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Read MoreTwo richly layered new books from Thames & Hudson capture the contrast between the human figure in Persian art and the figure in Indian art.
“Persian Painting: The Arts of the Book and Portraiture” by Adel T. Adamova and Manijeh Bayani (552 pages, $50) reproduces in paperback for the first time shimmering illuminated manuscripts, miniature paintings and decorated book bindings from the 11th through early 20th centuries. Illustrations from such works as Firdawsi’s “Shah-nameh” (“The Persian Book of Kings”) and Nizami’s “Khamsah” draw on The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait.
“The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close Encounters with 101 Great Works, 1100-1900” by B.N. Goswamy (570 pages, $50) covers roughly the same period. How these books cover these periods, however, is vastly different. ...
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Read MoreIn the end, I think Stan Wawrinka did Novak Djokovic a favor. By beating Nole in the French Open final, he took the Grand Slam pressure off of him and enabled him to say, “You know what? The heck with it. I’m slamming that door (pun intended) and going for it at Wimbledon and the US Open.”
All the talk was about Serena, but Nole actually came closer to winning the Grand Slam as he lost in the French final but won the other three (US Open, Wimbledon, Australian Open) whereas she won the French, Australian and Wimbledon but lost in the US semifinals. ...
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Read MoreMy family, friends and colleagues often tease me about my fascination for Alexander the Great. I get it. Who cares about someone – a single-minded Greco-Macedonian conqueror, no less – who lived some 300 years before Jesus?
But you see, the fact that we call Jesus Christ “Jesus Christ:” – and not Joshua bar Joseph, his historical Hebrew name – is because of Alexander and the spread of Hellenistic culture. Before Alexander, culture flowed east to west. After his conquest of the Persian Empire (331 B.C.), it would tend west to east. And the resulting tension between the two has reverberated down through the ages, particularly in the Middle East, the heart of his empire.
Our soldiers have been following in his footfall since the start of the Iraq War in 2003, as I wrote then for the Gannett newspapers. We’re still living in Alexander’s world. We just don’t know it.
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