The War that Killed Achilles

Resumen del libro

The "Iliad" is still the greatest poem about war that our culture has ever produced. For a hundred generations, poets and thinkers in the West have pored over, retold and argued about the events described in this martial epic, even when direct knowledge of it was lost. Various empires have admired it as a book that in telling the story of the siege of Troy also extols the warrior ethic, and teaches the young how to die well.

Yet the figure at the heart of the epic, the consummate warrior Achilles, is a brooding, controversial hero. He is a fierce critic of those who have started this war and allowed it to drag on, consuming soldiers and civilians alike. Disconcertingly, "The Iliad" portrays war as a catastrophe that destroys cities, orphans children and wrecks whole societies.

Caroline Alexander's extraordinary book is not about any of the traditional concerns that have occupied classicists for centuries. It is simpler and more radical than that. In her words, 'This book is about what the "Iliad" is about; this book is about what the "Iliad" says of war.'

Biografía del autor

Caroline Alexander colabora en las prestigiosas publicaciones The New Yorker, Granta, Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian, Outside y National Geographic. Asimismo, ha sido la comisaria de la exposición "Endurance: La legendaria expedición de Shackleton", realizada en el American Museum of Natural History en 1999.