num_pages: 416
description: Provocative military historian Victor Davis Hanson has given painstakingly researched &amp; 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 &amp; Sparta fought a bloody conflict that resulted in the collapse of Athens &amp; the end of its golden age. Thucydides wrote the standard history of the Peloponnesian War, which has given readers throughout the ages a vivid &amp; 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 &amp; insight into how these events echo in the present. He compellingly portrays the ways Athens &amp; Sparta fought on land &amp; sea, in city &amp; countryside, &amp; details their employment of the full scope of conventional &amp; nonconventional tactics, from sieges to targeted assassinations, torture &amp; terrorism. He also assesses the crucial roles played by warriors such as Pericles &amp; Lysander, artists, among them Aristophanes, &amp; thinkers including Sophocles &amp; Plato. Hanson’s perceptive analysis of events &amp; personalities raises many thought-provoking questions: Were Athens &amp; Sparta like America &amp; Russia, two superpowers battling to the death? Is the Peloponnesian War echoed in the endless, frustrating conflicts of Vietnam, Northern Ireland &amp; 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 &amp; conservatives, a cultural war that manifestly controls military policies? Hanson daringly brings the facts to life &amp; 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.
language: English
title: A War Like No Other: How the Athenians & Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War
titlecomplete: A War Like No Other: How the Athenians & Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War
characters: Epaminondas, William Tecumseh Sherman, Thucydides, George S. Patton
genres: Greece, Historical, Ancient History, Military Fiction, Classics, War, Nonfiction, Ancient, History, Military History
ratings_count: 2617
publisher: Random House