Everything we know about Alexander comes from ancient sources, which agree unanimously that he was extraordinary and greater than everyday mortals. From his birth into a hypercompetitive world of royal women through his training under the eyes and fists of stern soldiers and the piercing intellect of Aristotle; through friendships, rivalries, conquests and negotiations; through acts of generosity and acts of murder, this book explains who Alexander was, what motivated him, where he succeeded (in his own eyes) and where he failed, and how he believed that he earned a new "mixed" nature combining the human and the divine. This book explains what made Alexander "Great" according to the people and expectations of his time and place and rejects modern judgments asserted on the basis of an implicit moral superiority to antiquity. Explains how poets, historians and philosophers (European and Asian) evaluated the life and deeds of a deeply thoughtful, fearless and innovative warrior-king striving 'always to be the best' and 'go beyond'; Investigates the sources for Alexander, as well as war technology in his era, battlefield surgery and the consumption of alcohol; Includes a concluding chapter on Alexander's legacy in fiction and films and how his memory is invoked in political speeches of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. - Publisher.