One of our most provocative military historians, Victor Davis
Hanson has given us painstakingly researched and pathbreaking
accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the
twenty-first century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with
our most urgent modern concerns to create his most engrossing work
to date, A War Like No Other.
Over the course of a generation, the Hellenic city-states of Athens
and Sparta fought a bloody conflict that resulted in the collapse
of Athens and the end of its golden age. Thucydides wrote the
standard history of the Peloponnesian War, which has given readers
throughout the ages a vivid and authoritative narrative. But Hanson
offers readers something new: a complete chronological account that
reflects the political background of the time, the strategic
thinking of the combatants, the misery of battle in multifaceted
theaters, and important insight into how these events echo in the
present.
Hanson compellingly portrays the ways Athens and Sparta fought on
land and sea, in city and countryside, and details their employment
of the full scope of conventional and nonconventional tactics, from
sieges to targeted assassinations, torture, and terrorism. He also
assesses the crucial roles played by warriors such as Pericles and
Lysander, artists, among them Aristophanes, and thinkers including
Sophocles and Plato.
Hanson's perceptive analysis of events and personalities raises
many thought-provoking questions: Were Athens and Sparta like
America and Russia, two superpowers battling to the death? Is the
Peloponnesian War echoed in the endless, frustrating conflicts of
Vietnam, Northern Ireland, and the current Middle East? Or was it
more like America's own Civil War, a brutal rift that rent the
fabric of a glorious society, or even this century's "red
state--blue state" schism between liberals and conservatives, a
cultural war that manifestly controls military policies? Hanson
daringly brings the facts to life and unearths the often surprising
ways in which the past informs the present.
Brilliantly researched, dynamically written, A War Like No Other is
like no other history of this important war.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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