If you thought you accomplished a lot at 20, here’s some perspective: at 20, the 335 BC Macedonian Alexander the Great was off to conquer his known world. By 25, he’d vanquished Persia, defeated Egypt and founded Alexandria, taking Syria, Phoenicia and Mesopotamia on the way—making him the ruler of the largest empire the world had seen.
But what do we know about the man himself and his insatiable appetite to discover the elusive edge of the world, a concept shaped by Greek myths and geographical misunderstandings of his time? A lethal tactician, empire builder, a student of Aristotle, cosmopolitan—what do we really know about the last years of his life?
At 6 pm March 19th, the Bookplate bookstore will host Rachel Kousser at Sultana’s Lawrence Wetlands Preserve to talk about her extraordinary biography, Alexander at The End of The World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great and bring us closer to understanding the man and the world he ruled in 300 BC.
Rachel Kousser is the chair of the Classics department at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and a professor of ancient art and archaeology at Brooklyn College. Her most recent work, The Afterlives of Greek Sculpture: Interaction, Transformation, Destruction received an Archaeological Institute of America Publication Subvention Award and was shortlisted for the Runciman Book Award for a book on Greek history or culture. Professor Kousser is also the author of Hellenistic and Roman Ideal Sculpture: The Allure of the Classical. 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.
For more event details contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or [email protected]. These events are free and open to the public, but reservations are recommended. The Bookplate will continue their 2025 event series with a partnership lecture at Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House on April 9th. Author Andrew Mozina will be discussing his novels Tandem and Contrary Motion, as well as his other works. Copies will be available at the shop before and after the event. Sultana’s Lawrence Wetlands Preserve is located at 301 S. Mill Street in Chestertown, Maryland.
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