Katie Marsico’s book, “Alexander the Great: Ancient King & Conqueror” is part of a series entitled Essential Lives. As the back cover of the book explains, “[The] Essential Lives [series] introduces the people who have shaped the world, impacted humanity, and changed the course of History.” Although brief, Marciso gives a good concise history of Alexander the Great and his numerous achievements. Pictures of statues and artwork from this time are used throughout the text to give readers a visual of what is being discussed. Marsico only uses two maps throughout the book, the first shows where Alexander was from in regards to Greece and the other shows the vast area that Alexander conquered during his life. The author notes under this particular map that, “He eventually acquired an empire of unparalleled size” (p.38). However the map is small and doesn't do justice to Alexander’s conquests. I feel when discussing Alexander and his life, maps are a key ingredient to show the magnitude of what he accomplished in his short life.

Something I did like about this book is the several access features at the end. Timelines, key facts, additional resources and even a glossary are presented to highlight key pieces of information about Alexander. ( )

Katie Marisco's qualifications for writing this book is that she is an experienced publisher in children’s literature, and a writer of children’s literature herself. She has listed a content consultant, D. Felton, Associate Professor of Classics at University of Massachusetts Amherst. The extent of the content consultant’s influence is not addressed. Other than this the content is fairly up to date and while directed towards young adults, does not water down the information or the complexity of the history presented. Overall the sidebars were sometimes distracting and were always much denser than the regular text. All of the photos are explained well enough but are not identified in the index. The glossary explains many terms someone new to ancient history need to make sense of the text, but these terms are not demarcated in the text, or referred to the glossary in any way. ( )