Donald Kagan: The Peloponnesian War (Penguin 2003) [IBR2026]

In this book I attempt a new history of the Peloponnesian War designed to meet the needs of readers in the twenty-first century. It is based on the scholarship employed in my four volumes on the war aimed chiefly at a scholarly audience, but my goal here is a readable narrative in a single volume to be read by the general reader for pleasure and to gain the wisdom that so many have sought in studying this war. I have avoided making comparisons between events in it and those in later history, although many leap to mind, in the hope that an uninterrupted account will better allow readers to draw their own conclusions. Back in May of this year, when I posted about my read of Thucydides, I mentioned I’d combined it with Kagan’s book Thucydides: The Reinvention of History, which argued against some of Thucydides’ attitudes towards people and events. I decided then to read this presentation of the Peloponnesian war, which draws on not just Thucydides, but also on other ancient historians…