What can we learn from the stunning rise and mysterious death of the ancient world’s greatest conqueror? An acclaimed biographer reconstructs the life of Alexander the Great in this magisterial revisionist portrait.

“[An] infectious sense of narrative momentum . . . Its energy is unflagging, including the verve with which it tackles that teased final mystery about the specific cause of Alexander’s death.”—The Christian Science Monitor

More than two millennia have passed since Alexander the Great built an empire that stretched to every corner of the ancient world, from the backwater kingdom of Macedonia to the Hellenic world, Persia, and ultimately to India—all before his untimely death at age thirty-three. Alexander believed that his empire would stop only when he reached the Pacific Ocean. But stories of both real and legendary events from his life have kept him evergreen in our imaginations with a legacy that has meant something different to every era: in the Middle Ages he became an exemplar of knightly chivalry, he was a star of Renaissance paintings, and by the early twentieth century he’d even come to resemble an English gentleman. But who was he in his own time?

In Alexander the Great, Anthony Everitt judges Alexander’s life against the criteria of his own age and considers all his contradictions. We meet the Macedonian prince who was naturally inquisitive and fascinated by science and exploration, as well as the man who enjoyed the arts and used Homer’s great epic the Iliad as a bible. As his empire grew, Alexander exhibited respect for the traditions of his new subjects and careful judgment in administering rule over his vast territory. But his career also had a dark side. An inveterate conqueror who in his short life built the largest empire up to that point in history, Alexander glorified war and was known to commit acts of remarkable cruelty.

As debate continues about the meaning of his life, Alexander’s death remains a  mystery. Did he die of natural causes—felled by a fever—or did his marshals, angered by his tyrannical behavior, kill him? An explanation of his death can lie only in what we know of his life, and Everitt ventures to solve that puzzle, offering an ending to Alexander’s story that has eluded so many for so long.

He found Rome made of clay and left it made of marble. As Rome’s first emperor, Augustus transformed the unruly Republic into the greatest empire the world had ever seen. His consolidation and expansion of Roman power two thousand years ago laid the foundations, for all of Western history to follow. Yet, despite Augustus’s accomplishments, very few biographers have concentrated on the man himself, instead choosing to chronicle the age in which he lived. Here, Anthony Everitt, the bestselling author of Cicero, gives a spellbinding and intimate account of his illustrious subject. Augustus began his career as an inexperienced teenager plucked from his studies to take center stage in the drama of Roman politics, assisted by two school friends, Agrippa and Maecenas. Augustus’s rise to power began with the assassination of his great-uncle and adoptive father, Julius Caesar, and culminated in the titanic duel with Mark Antony and Cleopatra. The world that made Augustus-and that he himself later remade-was driven by intrigue, sex, ceremony, violence, scandal, and naked ambition. Everitt has taken some of the household names of history-Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Antony, Cleopatra-whom few know the full truth about, and turned them into flesh-and-blood human beings. At a time when many consider America an empire, this stunning portrait of the greatest emperor who ever lived makes for enlightening and engrossing reading. Everitt brings to life the world of a giant, rendered faithfully and sympathetically in human scale. A study of power and political genius, Augustus is a vivid, compelling biography of one of the most important rulers in history.

– John Adams said of Cicero, “All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined.” Voltaire said of Cicero, “He taught us how to think.” And yet Anthony Everitt’s authoritative yet accessible work is the first one-volume biography of the Roman statesman in over 25 years. – “Using Cicero’s letters to his good friend Atticus, among other sources, Everitt recreates the fascinating world of political intrigue, sexual decadence and civil unrest of Republican Rome . Everitt’s first book is a brilliant study that captures Cicero’s internal struggles and insecurities as well as his external political successes.”-Publishers Weekly (starred review) – “Comprehensive, accessible survey of the personal and political life of lawyer, politician, philosopher, and crank Marcus Tullius Cicero . Masterfully lucid and compelling; sure to be required reading in the Cicero canon.”-Kirkus Reviews

Acclaimed British historian Anthony Everitt delivers a compelling account of the former orphan who became Roman emperor in A.D. 117 after the death of his guardian Trajan. Hadrian strengthened Rome by ending territorial expansion and fortifying existing borders. And-except for the uprising he triggered in Judea-his strength-based diplomacy brought peace to the realm after a century of warfare.

A striking, nuanced biography of Nero—the controversial populist ruler and last of the Caesars—and a vivid portrait of ancient Rome

“This exciting and provocative book grabs the reader while supporting its arguments with careful classical scholarship.”—Barry Strauss, author of The War That Made the Roman Empire

There are many infamous stories about the Roman emperor Nero: He set fire to Rome and thrummed his lyre as it burned. Cruel, vain, and incompetent, he then cleared the charred ruins and built a vast palace. He committed incest with his mother, who had schemed and killed to place him on the throne, and later murdered her. Nero has long been the very image of a bad ruler, a legacy left behind by the historians of his day, who despised him.

But there is a mystery. For a long time after his death, anonymous hands laid flowers on his grave. The monster was loved. In this nuanced biography, Anthony Everitt, the celebrated biographer of classical Greece and Rome, and investigative journalist Roddy Ashworth reveal the contradictions inherent in Nero and offer a reappraisal of his life. Contrary to popular memory, the empire was well managed during his reign. He presided over diplomatic triumphs and Rome’s epic conquest of Britain and British queen Boudica’s doomed revolt against Nero’s legions. He was also a champion of arts and culture who loved music, and he won the loyalty of the lower classes with fantastic spectacles. He did not set fire to Rome.

In Nero, ancient Rome comes to life: the crowded streets that made it prone to fires, deadly political intrigues, and building projects that continuously remade the city. In this teeming and politically unstable world, Nero was vulnerable to fierce reproach from the nobility and relatives who would gladly usurp him, and he was often too ready to murder rivals. He had a vision for Rome, but, racked by insecurity, perhaps he never really had the stomach to govern it.

This is the bloodstained story of one of Rome’s most notorious emperors. Nero has become a byword for cruelty, decadence, and despotism, but in Anthony Everitt’s hands, Nero’s life is a cautionary tale about the mettle it takes to rule.

Filled with tales of adventure and astounding reversals of fortune, The Rise of Athens celebrates the city-state that transformed the world-from the democratic revolution that marked its beginning, through the city’s political and cultural golden age, to its decline into the ancient equivalent of a modern-day university town.

Anthony Everitt constructs his history with unforgettable portraits of the talented, tricky, ambitious, and unscrupulous Athenians who fueled the city’s rise. An unparalleled storyteller, Everitt combines erudite, thoughtful historical analysis with stirring narrative set pieces that capture the colorful, dramatic, and exciting world of ancient Greece.

Although the history of Athens is less well known than that of other world empires, the city-state’s allure would inspire Alexander the Great, the Romans, and even America’s own Founding Fathers. It’s fair to say that the Athenians made possible the world in which we live today. In this peerless new work, Anthony Everitt breathes vivid life into this most ancient story.

Emerging as a market town from a cluster of hill villages in the eighth
and seventh centuries B.C., Rome grew to become the ancient world’s
preeminent power. Everitt fashions the story of Rome’s rise to glory
into an erudite book filled with lasting lessons for our time. He
chronicles the clash between patricians and plebeians that defined the
politics of the Republic. He shows how Rome’s shrewd strategy of
offering citizenship to her defeated subjects was instrumental in
expanding the reach of her burgeoning empire. And he outlines the
corrosion of constitutional norms that accompanied Rome’s imperial
expansion, as old habits of political compromise gave way, leading to
violence and civil war. In the end, unimaginable wealth and power
corrupted the traditional virtues of the Republic, and Rome was left
triumphant everywhere except within its own borders. nbsp; Everitt
paints indelible portraits of the great Romans-and non-Romans-who left
their mark on the world out of which the mighty empire grew:
Cincinnatus, Rome’s George Washington, the very model of the patrician
warrior/aristocrat; the brilliant general Scipio Africanus, who turned
back a challenge from the Carthaginian legend Hannibal; and Alexander
the Great, the invincible Macedonian conqueror who became a role model
for generations of would-be Roman rulers. Here also are the intellectual
and philosophical leaders whose observations on the art of government
and “the good life” have inspired every Western power from antiquity to
the present: Cato the Elder, the famously incorruptible statesman who
spoke out against the decadence of his times, and Cicero, the consummate
orator whose championing of republican institutions put him on a
collision course with Julius Caesar and whose writings on justice and
liberty continue to inform our political discourse today. nbsp;
Rome’s decline and fall have long fascinated historians, but the story
of how the empire was won is every bit as compelling. With The Rise of Rome,
one of our most revered chroniclers of the ancient world tells that
tale in a way that will galvanize, inform, and enlighten modern listeners.