Lexington Books
Pages: 280
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4985-0527-7 • Hardback • March 2015 • $121.00 • (£93.00)
978-1-4985-0529-1 • Paperback • April 2019 • $47.99 • (£37.00)
978-1-4985-0528-4 • eBook • March 2015 • $42.50 • (£33.00)
Justin D. Lyons is associate professor of history and political science at Ashland University.
Part I: Alexander
Chapter 1: Alexander and the Macedonians
Chapter 2: The Persian Empire
Chapter 3: The Campaigns of Alexander
Chapter 4: The Leadership of Alexander
Part II: Cortés
Chapter 5: Spain, Cortés, and the Conquistadors
Chapter 6: The Aztecs
Chapter 7: The Conquest of Mexico
Chapter 8: Cortés the Commander
It is difficult to know what Lyons was trying to accomplish with this book. No new history is presented here. Nor is there a novel interpretation of the sources—they are read and cited only in translation. The basic facts are still the same: Alexander the Great conquers Asia Minor, the Middle East, Egypt, Persia, Afghanistan, and parts of India; Hernán Cortés conquers Mexico. The stories of those conquests remain those repeated for centuries. There is some novelty in linking a Macedonian general of the fourth century BCE with a Spanish general of the 16th century CE. . . .Summing Up: Recommended. Public libraries only.
— Choice Reviews
At the height of the Roman empire, when despotism had so long been the order of the day that it seemed as if there were no other options, Plutarch of Chaeronea composed parallel lives of the noble Greeks and Romans with an eye to keeping alive in memory as a human possibility political liberty and the statesmanship to which it once gave rise. Taking a page from Plutarch’s script in a time when campaigns of conquest seem a relic of the past, Justin Lyons asks us in this gracefully written volume to compare as leaders, as statesmen, and human beings Alexander the Great and Hernán Cortés. We must hope that this book is the first in a series of parallel lives that he will write.
— Paul Rahe, Hillsdale College
Like a self-proclaimed latter day Plutarch, Justin Lyons boldly goes where Alexander the Great of Macedon and Hernán Cortés of Castile blazed their respective trails, comparing and contrasting the motives, methods and achievements of the two conquering empire-builders who changed the political map of the world, and doing so within an illuminating overall moral-philosophical frame of reference and evaluation.
— Paul Cartledge, University of Cambridge