Ease Reading-Find Your Next Favorite Book

Hot Search

A War Like No Other: How the Athenians & Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War

victor davis hanson

... Show More
Provocative military historian Victor Davis Hanson has given painstakingly researched & pathbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the 21st century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with modern concerns to create his most engrossing work to date, A War Like No Other. Over the course of a generation, the Hellenic poleis of Athens & Sparta fought a bloody conflict that resulted in the collapse of Athens & the end of its golden age. Thucydides wrote the standard history of the Peloponnesian War, which has given readers throughout the ages a vivid & authoritative narrative. But Hanson offers 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 & insight into how these events echo in the present. He compellingly portrays the ways Athens & Sparta fought on land & sea, in city & countryside, & details their employment of the full scope of conventional & nonconventional tactics, from sieges to targeted assassinations, torture & terrorism. He also assesses the crucial roles played by warriors such as Pericles & Lysander, artists, among them Aristophanes, & thinkers including Sophocles & Plato. Hanson’s perceptive analysis of events & personalities raises many thought-provoking questions: Were Athens & Sparta like America & Russia, two superpowers battling to the death? Is the Peloponnesian War echoed in the endless, frustrating conflicts of Vietnam, Northern Ireland & 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 & conservatives, a cultural war that manifestly controls military policies? Hanson daringly brings the facts to life & 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.

416 pages, Paperback

First published October 4,2005

This edition

Format
416 pages, Paperback
Published
September 12, 2006 by Random House
ISBN
9780812969702
ASIN
0812969707
Language
English
Characters More characters
  • Thucydides

    Thucydides

    Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC....

  • Epaminondas

    Epaminondas

    ...

  • William Tecumseh Sherman

    William Tecumseh Sherman

    William Tecumseh Sherman (1820 - 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–65), for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military s...

  • George S. Patton

    George S. Patton

    George Smith Patton, Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was a general in the United States Army best known for his command of the Seventh United States Army, and later the Third United States Army, in the European Theater of World War II....

More editions

About the author

Profile Image for victor davis hanson

victor davis hanson

... Show More

Readers also enjoyed

Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
32(32%)
4 stars
36(36%)
3 stars
32(32%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
ChemicalRomance
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
... Show More
Super interesting read, learned a lot but the structure made some content a little repetitive. Highly recommend reading while playing or after having played the Assassins Creed Oddysey to put some faces to names. Did not realize Alcibiades was such a scum bag from the game but good to hear how his story ends in this book haha
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Muwolfwarrior
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
... Show More
VDH simply fails at being anything less than brilliant. A stunning walkthrough of the Peloponnesian War, not ordered by chronology but type of fighting. By structuring it this way, the different notes of the conflict really come out, and you see why Thucydides wasn't happy to refer to it merely as just another πόλεμος.

Having read through Thucydides once, I was quite overwhelmed by the amount of new names, places and events that needed to be taken in. I've found VDH's book to be a really helpful stepping stone to rereading 'The Peloponnesian War' - it definitely assumes you've read Thucydides, but also takes time to unpack so many elements that are glossed over, and now I feel much clearer on the events and so more ready to reread the original.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
azumarillo
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
... Show More
A War Like No Other retold the Peloponnesian war by thoroughly explaining each aspect of how the Athenians and Spartans fought and strategized. This was not a strictly chronological account, but he gives general time frames about what is being discussed. My favorite chapters detailed how the Spartan strategy of raiding was largely unimpactful, the effects of the plague, and the explanation of naval warfare. I always assumed that Triremes and navys had a greater range than they did.

A consequence of this style of retelling is that events that occur are largely background noise to the strategies and topics Hanson discusses. He will describe the event or battle in little detail unless it better serves to illustrate the effectiveness of a tactic. This was a problem for me when I didn't have general knowledge of the event that occurred, as my only background knowledge comes from Anthony Everitt's book The Rise of Athens: The Story of the World's Greatest Civilization . This is a great book if one is interested in learning more about the Peloponnesian war, specifically the tactics and techniques the ancient Greeks used in war.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Aashii
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
... Show More
It's a classic in military history literature. I recently read a survey history of ancient greece and wanted to learn more about the Peloponnesian War. Each chapter contained a theme that the author analyzed in detail: Why the war was fought; Spartan's unsuccessful scorched earth policy in Attica; the impact of disease; hoplite warfare; horses and cavalry in warfare, especially for the Syracusans; naval warfare, and the author's conclusions. Hanson amazingly shows how the Peloponnesian War was more than a civil war, but a war of brutality, ethnic cleansing, and the rise of opportunists like Alcibiades. He also uses analogies to other wars, including the current wars in the middle east, to explain the impact on events. If you want to learn about Greek Warfare, then this is your book.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Lria
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
... Show More
Absolutely fascinating book. It has a strong limitation - it is not told thematically, and actually understanding the war between Athens and Sparta as a series of events in time is a bit of a challenge. But this is more than made up by the clarity of the prose, and the attention to the broader themes - naval war, cavalry as a force on the battlefield, the impact of slaves on the conflict, the battles between hoplites, sieges of cities. If you know only that Athens was a democracy, and Sparta an oligarchy, you will learn much from this book.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
masakar
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
... Show More
The author treats the reader as if the reader is mentally handicapped. Can’t go three pages without comparing a battle, a political policy, city-state, army or strategical decision with modern-day America, the nazis, Hitler, the nazis, the waffen-SS, the nazis. He repeats himself on and on again about the same facts, same information without adding anything new of value. The concluding chapter then just repeats what you have just read in an intellectually insulting way.

Just read Thucydides instead.
0 0 Reply
Leave a Review
You must be logged in to rate and post a review. Register an account to get started.