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.
