Invictus: A History of Alexander the Great by Alexander James CutrulesReview by: Robert E. ReeserThe Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Winter, 1958), pp. 400-401Published by: Arkansas Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40023636 .

Accessed: 18/06/2014 10:56

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Arkansas Historical Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheArkansas Historical Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.60 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 10:56:18 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

.oo ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The Fourth Arkansas was made up of ten companies. These came from six counties : Polk, Montgomery, Hemp- stead, Pike, Calhoun, and LaFayette. The complete muster roll of each company is given, and there is indicated the battles in which each man fought. There is also given such information as the date and place where members of the companies were killed or wounded or captured. These muster rolls are one of the most valuable features of the book. It is fortunate that they have been preserved and reproduced. Many present-day residents of these six counties, as well as others, will be especially interested in them.

There are 150 pages in the book. The first 106 pages are taken up with the story. The next 2j pages consist of biographical sketches of leaders and of medical officers with whom the author was associated. On the last 17 pages are printed the muster rolls.

The present reprint is an attractive volume. It is sub- stantially bound in gray cloth with the title stamped in gold on the outside. The print is cleiar. The paper is of good quality. The book is "not a facsimile," but is repro- duced, as it was written, "as near ,as it is humainly pos- sible." The manufacturers, the McCowart-Mercer Press, Inc., of Jackson, Tenn., have done an excellent job. Readers will appreciate the outstanding merits of the make-up of this reprint.

In making this volume available, the publishers have rendered an outstanding service to the cause of Arkansas history. This is a book for everyone. It should find a place in every high school library, every college library, and every public library in the state. It should reach all libraries where there is an interest in Civil War history. Arkansans cannot afford to miss it. Little Rock, Arkansas J. H. Atkinson

Invictus: A History of Alexander the Great. By Alexander James Cutrules (New York: Vantage Press, 1958) pp. 342. $3.95.

Mr. Cutrules, a twenty-five year old graduate stu- dent in Education at Boston University, has done what

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.60 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 10:56:18 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS *Q1

many of us have frequently thought of doing - he wrote a book about his favorite subject. His avowed purposes was "to permit the reader to visualize Alexander as he really was and effectively to refute those writers, who, in their shallow inability to intelligently appreciate and in- terpret the conqueror, can only see Alexander as an in- satiable robber and Machiavellian adventurer/' (pp. 7-8). For those who would anticipate from this a vicious and slashing attack upon other writers, great and small, dis- appointment is in store. Mr. Cutrules' bark is worse than his bite and the only "shallow" anti-Alexander writer of modern times whom he specifically "refutes" is George Grote who has been dead for almost a century and whose opinions concerning Alexander have always been considered the weakest and most unreliable portion of his great his- tory of Greece. Therefore, the author's purpose results in his administering a very mild whipping to a very dead Centaur.

In spite of this basic weakness, the biography is not a bad one. The author writes quite well, he has used ex- tensive quotations from ancient sources which add to the color of the book and his selections from modern historians appear to have been chosen primarily for their literary and descriptive qualities rather than for their scholarship. The book is obviously not intended to be an original scholarly contribution - and it isn't - but a reader who is interested in a biography of one of history's most sensational and colorful figures would find it both enjoyable and reward- ing.

The most serious defects of the book are the author's neglect of many of the most important modern authorities such as Tarn, Wilcken, Ehrenberg and Robinson - he re- lies too much upon Connop Thirlwall (1797- 1875), whom he consistently refers to as Thirwall, the complete lack of maps - an inexcusable omission in a work of this nature - and the total absence of an index. A bibliography is in- cluded, but it is not a particularly good one nor are the items properly cited.

University of Arkansas Robert E. Reeser

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.60 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 10:56:18 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions