Absolutely fantastic history of the years following Alexander The Greats death and the resulting power struggles throughout Europe and Asia between his generals, satraps and the Argead dynasty and several attempted Greek revolts. I had no previous knowledge on this time period and found it to be incredibly interesting. Romms writing is concise and packed full of information and doesn’t linger anywhere for too long. I would recommend this book to anyone who has any interest in this time period as an excellent entry point.

An excellent book, scholarly yet easy to read, detailing the collapse of Alexander the Great's empire after his death, a time period with which even most classicists of my acquaintance are not particularly familiar. One aspect of the period too often ignored by historians that receives excellent treatment in this book is the degree to which the Macedonians really loathed and belittled the Greeks, a peculiar form of early racism, made apparent in the treatment of Eumenes, the one Greek among the Macedonians vying for power after Alexander (he holds out almost until the end, but it does not end well for poor Eumenes, mostly because he was Greek and the Macedonians hated him for it). Recommended to anyone with an interest in ancient Greek and Mediterranean history . . .

"He had begun his time in power by killing his own men under the feet of elephants and ended it by killing them in the maws of crocodiles"

An excellent narrative of a relatively obscure period of history.

I feel like James Romm wanted very much to write a book like this (that is to say, a book like Peter Green's Alexander of Macedon), but most great stories of the classical world (specifically Alexander's) have been given this treatment already. So Romm chose to tell a story that has gotten fairly minimal attention from either ancient or modern writers: the competition to succeed Alexander the Great. It's a good story, full of scheming, betrayal, and lots of battles, and in the end - minor spoiler - it's really the story of Eumenes, a Greek who becomes an unlikely competitor for power in the Macedonian empire (although I won't say how his bid plays out).

You would need some interest in or acquaintance with the Alexander story before reading this. I suggest picking up Green's Alexander of Macedon first, and if you're still hungry for more turn here for the rest of the story. These two books also make nice gifts for anyone you know with a taste for classical history.

This is an excellent account of the aftermath of the death of Alexander the Great and the subsequent conflicts between his generals for control of his empire. It reads like a thriller, a real page turner, helped by the fact that I knew very little about what happened when Alexander died, other than the fact that one of his generals, Ptolemy, had survived and his dynasty would continue until the death of Cleopatra after the battle of Actium in 30BC. The other protagonists I knew very little of, so this book was not only very entertaining but also very informative

This book was an impulse addition to my Amazon Wish List, quite far outside my usual circle of history reading interests. Thank goodness it had plenty of maps to help me visualize a part of the world I am not very familiar with, much less a time period in history (300 B.C.-ish). It was a hard slog for me, not gonna lie. The author did a good job writing for an audience like me who maybe was not exactly on top of their ancient Greek history. There are many characters to keep track of; lots of multiple story lines, if you will. Nevertheless, I found myself constantly drawing comparisons to current events. Political power struggles haven't changed much.

1. Alliances shift with the political winds.
2. Weapons mean nothing if you don't have a good strategy.
3. Once an outsider, always an outsider.
4. Poison is an effective remedy for eliminating enemies.
5. Trust No One.

One aspect of this era in history that I find especially troubling is the constant state of flux of democracy in Athens. My impression of Athens was a shining beacon of democratic society. I was wrong. The rich did not want to lose power, and the common folk stunk at governing. Then you throw in the outside influences stirring the pot. Sound familiar? Makes me worry for the future.

Earlier this year, I read Dividing the Spoils, which looked at the 40 years after Alexander and the big picture division of his Empire. This new work by James Romm comes at it from a much tighter angle--the six years after Alexander's death in Babylon, especially the activities of the second-tier of actors--Demosthenes and Aristotle in the fractious political scene of Athens, Antipater's politically savvy daughters, Chandragupta Maurya and his adviser Kautilya, the Elephant Corps, the Illyrian warrior-women Cynnane and Adea and the dark horse Cassander.

I've never read anything by Romm before, so I was unsure quite what to expect, but I found this book to be very easy to read. Romm takes great pains to lay everything out as concisely as possible--which isn't particularly concisely in some places, but that's to be expected in a period as fractured as this one--in a period as fractured as this one. Romm manages to make several of the major players seem sympathetic, most especially Eumenes, without failing to report on the best information he can. I admire his ability to split the first 8 years following Alexander's death into rough geo-political theatres, and then to further subdivide those theatres by general since I think it added a lot of clarity to the narrative.

I found his overall approach to a very confused (and somewhat less well-documented period, at least in popular modern scholarship, than the one immediately preceding it) very easy-to-follow and concise. I found his style of narration to be easy to read, which isn't always the case with academics. I also really appreciated that the typeset was really nice, and interspersing the images in the text rather than the more common inset pages.

The one thing I would have appreciated, which probably fell outside of the scope of Romm's work, was a more comprehensive epilogue that explained what became of the dynasties founded by Alexander's generals, most especially the Seluecids, who Romm hardly mentions throughout the work. I think it would have also been interesting had Romm chosen to expound a little more on the Ptolemies and their succession in Egypt, especially since Romm takes pains to mention the end of the of the dynasty--Cleopatra--and drops several hints about the Ptolemy's interesting dynastic plans. While these things may not technically have added anything to the geo-political narrative, but I think it definitely would have helped to humanize some of the notable figures of the time. (Conversely, Romm may not have wished to do this, but, unlike the mythology that surrounded Alexander, I don't see what Romm loses by painting these men as human with human motivations and considerations.)

Overall, I enjoyed both Romm's scholarship and his approach to reporting it.