Alexander: God, King, Man

by Edmund Richardson

An enthralling new biography of Alexander the Great, written as an intimate, present portrait of the way his world saw him and the price he paid to become history's greatest military mind.

Alexander the Great: a wide-eyed boy from the hills of Macedon who ruled most of the known world by his mid-twenties. For centuries, historians, refugees, poets, and explorers have told his story, and yet Alexander himself has remained a mystery.

But over the last few years, a series of remarkable discoveries has changed everything. From the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea and the dust of Central Asian hillsides, the remains of Alexander's cities have emerged. The diaries of Babylonian astronomers who knew him have been deciphered. The tombs of his ancestors have been unearthed. Now, for the first time since antiquity, it is possible to tell a different story. The story of a young man whom almost no-one noticed, until the day he became king. A king who became a hero, a hero who became a living god, and a god who died broken-hearted in Babylon.

Using cutting-edge research and a unique narrative approach, Alexander thrusts readers into Alexander the Great's world in ways which have never before been possible: to see the same stars wheeling overhead, feel the desert wind, and experience the full horror of battle. Alexander is a cinematic work of non-fiction, a revelatory retelling of one of the most famous and elusive stories in history.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

496 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication September 29, 2026

About the author

Edmund Richardson is Professor of Classics at Durham University. He was named one of the BBC New Generation Thinkers. He is the author of 'Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City' (Bloomsbury) and 'The King's Shadow: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Deadly Quest for the Lost City of Alexandria' (2022) (St Martin's Press).

Reviews

[Bonnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This new biography of Alexander the Great covers how he took control of the bankrupt kingdom of Macedonia after his father's assassination, maintained that control through a series of bloody conquests over the rest of Greece, Egypt, and the Persian Empire, before concluding with his spiraling downfall in Babylon. 

5 Reasons to Read
⚔️ Inclusion of many representations of stories–both contemporaneous and centuries in the future–and how they portrayed Alexander the Great.
⚔️ Incorporations of new information from recent archaeological discoveries. 
⚔️ A cast of real and truly gray characters in an age of absolute brutality. 
⚔️ Debunking of some fictions surrounding Alexander.
⚔️ Prose that is engaging and exciting, almost like reading an epic fantasy. 

Although I think Alexander: God, King, Man is a decent presentation of Alexander’s life, particularly his military expansion, the book is mostly concerned with deconstructing and debunking the representation of Alexander within fictional works from his own time and in the centuries following his death. I think Richardson does a good job of sifting the realities from the fantasies. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Saga Press for the eARC.