Rachel Kousser on Alexander the Great, with Michael Seymour

By 330 B.C.E., Alexander the Great had reached the pinnacle of success: he had defeated the Persian ruler Darius III and seized the capital city of Persepolis. His exhausted and traumatized soldiers were ready to return home to Macedonia. Yet Alexander had other plans. He was determined to continue heading east to Afghanistan in search of his ultimate goal: to reach the end of the world.

Alexander’s unrelenting desire to press on resulted in a perilous seven-year journey through the unknown eastern borderlands of the Persian empire that would test the great conqueror’s physical and mental limits. This incredible sweep of time, culminating with his death in 323 BC at the age of 32, would come to determine Alexander’s legacy and shape the empire he left behind.

In Alexander at the End of the World, renowned classicist and art history professor Rachel Kousser vividly brings to life Alexander’s labyrinthine, treacherous final years. Meticulously researched and grippingly written, Kousser’s narrative is an unforgettable tale of daring and adventure, an inspiring portrait of grit and ambition, and a powerful meditation on the ability to learn from failure.

Rachel Kousser is Professor at Brooklyn College and Executive Officer of the Program in Classics at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Kousser is the author of The Afterlives of Greek Sculpture: Interaction, Transformation, Destruction and Hellenistic and Roman Ideal Sculpture: The Allure of the Classical (Cambridge University Press, 2017 and 2008). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Getty Research Institute, and the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts.

Michael Seymour is Associate Curator in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is the author of Babylon: Legend, History, and the Ancient City (2014) and was co-curator of the exhibitions Babylon: Myth and Reality (British Museum, 2008) and The World between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East(Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019). He is currently part of a large team working on the complete renovation and redesign of the Met’s galleries for Ancient Near Eastern and Cypriot Art.

Host or Publisher The Leon Levy Center for Biography