At the Edge of the World: Alexander the Great and the Price of Conquest

He seized a throne at twenty. At thirty he stood at the edge of the known earth. Between those years lies the fastest rise in history and the bill it came with.

This epic biography puts you in the dust and the council tent, where myth meets logistics. Watch a young king throw a spear toward Asia and then keep it there with pay chests, grain ships, and a moving city of soldiers. See a road built across the sea at Tyre, a whisper in a dark room at Siwa, and torches licking the gold at Persepolis. March with elephants at the Hydaspes. Hear the rain at the Hyphasis when an army finally says no.

The story does not stop at victory. It follows a mind learning to rule many peoples at once. Persian robes appear in a Macedonian camp. Marriages bind generals to satraps. A prayer for concord rises at Opis. Each step widens the world and thins the man who imagined it. A friend is killed in a burst of wine and rage. A horse is buried. A beloved dies. Destiny argues with doubt.

Drawing on ancient eyewitnesses and modern scholarship, this book reads with the pace of a novel and the authority of history. It is a portrait of leadership, conquest, and the cost of turning many into one.