A War Like No Other
How the Athenians and Spartans fought the Peloponnesian War
Victor Davis Hanson
'Victor Davis Hanson once again demonstrates that his qualifications are unrivalled' Christopher Hitchens
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 A War Like No Other offers readers a complete chronological account that reflects the political background of the time, the strategic thinking of the combatants, the misery of battle, and an insight into how these events echo in the present day. In compelling detail, Hanson portrays how Athens and Sparta fought on land and sea, in city and countryside, using tactics that ranged from conventional sieges to targeted assassinations, torture and terror. He also assesses the crucial roles played by warriors like Pericles and Lysander, dramatists such as Aristophanes, and philosophers including Sophocles and Plato. Victor Davis Hanson's perceptive analysis of events and personalities raises many thought-provoking questions. Were Athens and Sparta like America and the USSR, two superpowers battling to the death? Is the Peloponnesian War echoed in the drawn-out conflicts of Vietnam, Northern Ireland and the current Middle-East? Was it more of a civil war, a brutal rift that rent the fabric of a glorious society; or a violent schism between liberals and conservatives, a cultural contest of the kind that even today determines a country's military policies? Hanson daringly brings the facts to life and unearths the often-surprising ways in which the past informs the present. 'The age of Pericles was also a time of famine, pestilence and atrocity: a "Thirty Year Slaughter". In order to understand the lesson this offers for civilisation, one must try to feel it as the Greeks felt it, and reflect it as they did. In this dual task, Victor Davis Hanson once again demontrates that his qualifications are unrivalled' Christopher Hitchens, author of Love, Poverty and War: Journey and Essays 'Hanson sails through his narrative with the grace of an Athenian trireme at Salamis... Alongside Thucydides himself, his volume will surely become the definitive work' Scotsman 'In warfare, as in so much else, the Greeks set the pattern for the West's future - a notion that Hanson has explored with great brilliance throughout his work... a work of great compassion and human sympathy' Daily Telegraph 'Filled with fascinating details... communicates to modern readers the ancient soldier's experience' Spectator 'The "war like no other", as Thucydides called it, continues to fascinate because it always seem pertient, and never more so than in Hanson's highly original, strikingly contemporary retelling of the superpower confrontation... In his capable hands, the past, more often than not, seems almost painfully present' New York Times 'He concentrates on the soldiers and their techniques rather than on the leaders, and shows that these clashes of civilisations, of democracy versus oligarchy, were wars from which students of both conflict and human behaviour alike can still learn much' Daily Telegraph 'This absorbing, carefully researched account brings this turbulent period to life' Good Book Guide
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About Victor Davis Hanson Victor Davis Hanson has written or edited numerous books, including The Western Way of War, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks, The Soul of Battle, Carnage and Culture and Ripples of Battle. He is director emeritus of the classics program at California State University, Fresno, and a classicist and military historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He lives with his wife and family in Selma, California.
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