The Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of Ramesses II Book

If you are a writer, role-player or wargamer this book is invaluable for information on Alexander's battles: Granicus, Issus, Siege of Tyre, Gaugamela, and Hydaspes - It gives a scene by scene breakdown of troop deployment with multiple diagrams and gives information about the terrain and kit/weapons. It also gives a brief synopsis of the aftermath of each of these battles. The book also contains lots of illustrations and some good maps.

It is limited in what it covers - it only has these 5 battles so if you want Charonea or any of the others you need to look elsewhere. The text is a little stilted and it's a bit impersonal - and it doesn't offer much on the characters of the men that fought - Its very much a textbook of battle strategy - but this is very useful if you want to recreate the battles in any way. Indeed one of the articles is specifically on wargaming Alexander's battles. There are some random things in here - there's a wonderful page dedicated to Athenian orators Demosthenes & Aeschines- but it doesn't have any relevance to the text or really the battles - and again there's some stuff on coinage that seems a bit out of place.

From my point of view its gravest oversight, other than the missing battles and campaigns is the lack of coverage on the generals themselves - I'd have loved a bio of each general with pictures, what battles they fought in which divisions they commanded etc. But you can't have everything and it really is an invaluable resource of what actually happened in each battle and how the troops were positioned.