When the first Superman movie came out I was frequently asked'What is a hero?' I remember the glib response I repeated somany times. My answer was that a hero is someone who commitsa courageous action without considering the consequences--a soldierwho crawls out of a foxhole to drag an injured buddy tosafety. And I also meant individuals who are slightly largerthan life: Houdini and Lindbergh, John Wayne, JFK, and JoeDiMaggio. Now my definition is completely different. Ithink a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength topersevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles: afifteen-year-old boy who landed on his head while wrestling withhis brother, leaving him barely able to swallow or speak; TravisRoy, paralyzed in the first thirty seconds of a hockey game in hisfreshman year at college. These are real heroes, and so arethe families and friends who have stood by them." The whole world held its breath when Christopher Reeve struggledfor life on Memorial Day, 1995. On the

Book De*ion In 336 b.c. Philip ofMacedonia was assassinated and his twenty-year-old son, Alexander,inherited his kingdom. Immediately quelling rebellion, Alexanderextended his father's empire throughout the Middle East and intoparts of Asia, fulfilling the soothsayer Aristander's predictionthat the new king "should perform acts so important and glorious aswould make the poets and musicians of future ages labour and sweatto describe and celebrate him." The Life of Alexander the Great is one of the first survivingattempts to memorialize the achievements of this legendary king,remembered today as the greatest military genius of all time. Thisexclusive Modern Library edition, excerpted from Plutarch's Lives,is a tale of honor, power, scandal, and bravery written by the mosteminent biographer of the ancient world. About Author VICTOR DAVIS HANSON has written extensively on both ancient Greekand military history; his ?fteen books include The Western Way ofWar and Between War and Peace. He is a senior fellow at

Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in the vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999 - and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. There is a reason why Stephen King is one of the bestselling writers in the world, ever. Described in the Guardian as 'the most remarkable storyteller in modern American literature', Stephen King writes books that draw you in and are impossible to put down.