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Donald W. Engels

Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army

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$19.95, £13.95 paperback

9780520042728

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December 1980, Available worldwide
Also in: Military History
"The most important work on Alexander the Great to appear in a long time. Neither scholarship nor semi-fictional biography will ever be the same again. . . .Engels at last uses all the archaeological work done in Asia in the past generation and makes it accessible. . . . Careful analyses of terrain, climate, and supply requirements are throughout combined in a masterly fashion to help account for Alexander's strategic decision in the light of the options open to him...The chief merit of this splendid book is perhaps the way in which it brings an ancient army to life, as it really was and moved: the hours it took for simple operations of washing and cooking and feeding animals; the train of noncombatants moving with the army. . . . this is a book that will set the reader thinking. There are not many books on Alexander the Great that do."—New York Review of Books
"The most important work on Alexander the Great to appear in a long time. Neither scholarship nor semi-fictional biography will ever be the same again. . . .Engels at last uses all the archaeological work done in Asia in the past generation and makes it accessible. . . . Careful analyses of terrain, climate, and supply requirements are throughout combined in a masterly fashion to help account for Alexander's strategic decision in the light of the options open to him...The chief merit of this splendid book is perhaps the way in which it brings an ancient army to life, as it really was and moved: the hours it took for simple operations of washing and cooking and feeding animals; the train of noncombatants moving with the army. . . . this is a book that will set the reader thinking. There are not many books on Alexander the Great that do."—New York Review of Books

"A volume for a considerable range of readers. Looking not so much at what Alexander did, but at how he went about it, Engels deals with what at first sight might seem the draw question of supplies, showing how the needs of an army of men on the move limited and conditioned the strategy of Alexander. . . . It should be of interest to all students of military history before the advent of steam and, indeed, to anyone interested in movements of early population. . . . Not everyone will accept all of Engel's findings...but we owe him a real debt of gratitude for what he has done."—Annals

"[Engels] has achieved the apparently impossible: he has shed new and solid light on Alexander's campaigns. . . . Rarely have I encountered as good a monograph."—Military Affairs
List of Tables and Maps
Acknowledgments
Frequently Abbreviated Works
Introduction

1. The Macedonian Army and Its Logistic System
2. Greece and Turkey
3. Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, and Iraq
4. Iran and Afghanistan
5. Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, and Southern Iran
6. Conclusion

Appendix
Note on the Maps
Maps
Bibliography
Index
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