"The book appears in the Clarendon Ancient History series, designed 'to provide authoritative translations introductions, and commentaries' to Greek and Latin texts studied by ancient historians. It is a sister volume to the author's 2011 edition in the same series of Plutarch's Caesar, the Life paired with Alexander in Plutarch's series of Parallel Lives. The life of Alexander the Great was clouded in legend from his own lifetime, not least because Alexander himself curated his image with such care; disentangling the truth is not an easy task, especially because our surviving narratives, including Plutarch's, all date from centuries later under the Roman empire. Plutarch's Life is especially important for Alexander's early years, but for his later achievements too it often supplements or corrects our other accounts; it is also a considerable literary achievement, as Plutarch produces a memorable picture of a brilliant soldier, full of spirit and ambition, gradually coarsened by his own successes and his suspicions of his friends until his final months at Babylon in a court full of superstition, terror, and dread. Plutarch had to navigate his way through an unusually vast stock of material to produce this portrait. This commentary discusses those literary techniques in detail as well as providing a thorough investigation of the historical issues that Plutarch's narrative raises"--