The story of the Trojan War is immortalized in Homer’s epic of epic poems, The Iliad and brought to life in Caroline Alexander’s The War That Killed Achilles – a work that Ken Burns calls “a triumph.” Through the hero Achilles, The Iliad draws on the true nature of what it means to be a soldier, to fight a conflict whose hallmarks are hardly honor and glory, but rather deception, betrayal, pride, violence, and the inescapability of fate. The War That Killed Achilles is a poignant dissection of the epic poem that is relevant to all wars, from ancient Greece through today’s Iraq.

Caroline Alexander is the author of the international bestsellers The Endurance and The Bounty and has written for The New Yorker, Granta, Smithsonian, Outside, and National Geographic. She studied philosophy and theology at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and has a doctorate in classics from Columbia University.

This event was a presentation of the Patron Network of THIRTEEN and WLIW21, in cooperation with The New York Society Library.  For more information on the Patron Network and its many benefits for supporters, please click here.

Speakers

Benita Eisler, Author
Caroline Alexander, Author, The War That Killed Achilles
Simon Prebble, Narrator and Voice Actor

Recorded at Temple Israel, October 29, 2009. Runtime: 60 minutes.

Read the related blog post by Sara Elliott Holliday from the New York Society Library.