8 Thucydides and The History of the Peloponnesian War
Channel: Steven Pressfield
Date: 2023-08-16

People have asked me sometimes if I had to recommend only one book that somebody should read to for citizenship and for just being a an awake, aware person in the 21st century. And this is the book “Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War.”
this is an incredible story of one of the great wars in history that has absolutely bearing for what's going on in modern times. Thucydides was an Athenian general who very early in the Peloponnesian War, which was a 27 year civil war between Athens and Sparta very early, he commanded a battle against the great Spartan general, Brasidas and he lost, and he was relieved of his command in disgrace and sent home.
So he said to himself, he had the sense that this war was going to be the greatest war in history. And he said, I'm going to record it. And he really is like the first real historian. He covered it all through all 27 years. And it was like s petri dish of of all the things that have happened in the modern world since then.
what he did was, for instance, when they would have debates in the Athenian assembly over whether to do this or do that, Thucydides was present and he would record well, I don't know how he did it, but one way or another he would get down the actual speeches of Pericles. And you know, the other, you know, great orators.
But the speeches, there are some where,  you have just regular Athenian citizens who have no reference in history other than this appearance.
They get up and they speak with such eloquence and intellectual grandeur. If I look back over American history, short of maybe Lincoln or Washington or Jefferson, we don't have anybody that was at the level of just these ordinary citizens. 
This is a great book. Really about human nature more than anything else.