The Peloponnesian War

The half page insert that Half Price Books left in the book was generated by a printer that was defective in the upper left corner of the page.That said. it's 5 stars for everything else! Half Priced Books is my new favorite bookstore.

Got involved with reading and studying classics through listening to Victor Davis Hansen. That lead to reading a litany of historical books from Xenophon's Anabasis to Thucydides...it's a rabbit hole and its fun.This book is a good compromise and well written history.

It was a treat reading Donald Kagan's book on the Peloponnesian War. As you may know, he had previously written a 4-book series on the war, each one focusing on a different phase of the war. This book was meant to be a one-book consolidation. The rub, for me, came in deciding whether or not to read the 4 separate books that delve deeper or just satisfy myself with 500 pages on the topic and move on.Kagan is one of the leading scholars on the war and writes extremely well. The book reads quickly and painlessly. I did feel slightly let down, however, because Kagan seems, in large part, to be simply retelling Thucydides, without scholarly inquiry or questioning.I especially appreciated Fagan's integration of quotes and information from Plutarch in the Thucydides' section and wished there had been more, perhaps information on what the battle scenes look like today or more background information on the city-states involved or areas Thucydides' account is deficient or contested. The post-Thucydides section at the end was more of a mish-mash of sources and quoted Xenophon's Hellenica surprisingly infrequently.If you're not sure which book to read in order to learn about the Peloponnesian War, I would definitely read Kagan's one book. If you're interested in anything much more than the storyline, you may want to look into Kagan's four books or other books or even try to slog through Thucydides (good luck!).

Professor Donald Kagan built his reputation as his generation's foremost scholar of Ancient Greece based upon his four volume history of the Peloponnesian War that was published between 1969-87. His friend John Hale of "Lords of the Sea" fame, convinced him to write a single volume history of the Peloponnesian War for non-specialists. The resulting book "The Peloponnesian War" has become a modern classic. Kagan's book has become the standard text of this conflict and it will have to be an extraordinary book that displaces it from this position."The Peloponnesian War" is the very model of a classic work. Donald Kagan is a gifted writer with the narrative gift to bring alive a 2,400 year old war. However, it takes more than good writing to make a classic book. It is the clearness of Kagan's vision which sets this book apart. Through his close reading of the ancient texts, Kagan is able to fill in the historical blank spots. For over two thousand years, readers have been able to thrill over the exploits of Thucydides, Pericles, Alcibiades and Lysander. Kagan's great contribution has been to make these great men more human by filling in the lost details. This is a great book and I highly recommend it.

Prof. Kagan, a very respected professor at Yale, has endeavored to write a history of the Peloponnesian War for the the unwashed masses - sort of a "Peloponnesian War for Dummies." However, he leaves out much needed background material for us real dummies. There is no glossary, no description of a trireme, no explanation of where the name "Peloponnesian" came from, no description of how people really lived in 450 B.C., and no explanatory footnotes. Keep your dictionary handy!On the other hand, "The Landmark Thucydides," a 19th century translation of the 2500-year-old history of the war - including a modern introduction, appendices, glossary, footnotes, photos, and better maps - is actually much more interesting.The introduction to the "Landmark" appologizes for Thucydides' convoluted and "difficult" verbage which springs from the original Greek. I'm sorry, but Prof. Kagan's writing is even more difficult to follow. He uses obscure words and for some reason refuses to use commas to set off the clauses in complex sentences.Incidentally, Thucydides explains very early in his book that the southern part of Greece was named after some guy named Pelops, a rich Turk who settled there and whose descendents ran the place for a time. Prof. Kagan either assumes that we dummies already know this or that we're too dumb to care.I think Prof. Kagan has been a professor too long. His writing lacks spunk.

Not the most striking prose ever committed to paper, but the author does a good job of laying out the overall narrative and speculating (not too wildly) on the motivation of the prominent persons. Gets a tad mundane in spots; can read more like a book report on Thucydides. But overall, a solid read and probably the best way for a modern reader to access Thucydides without actually wading through his ancient tome.

This book is amazing. The story underlying it is amazing, and the writing is superb - clear, flowing, and with appropriate detail and connections drawn.If you appreciate history you may be amazed at some of the events that are so epic, morally significant, and poetic as to sound far-fetched. The plot is quite thick at times. If you really can only read non-stop action pulp fiction, you probably aren't reading this review anyway, but this may come as close as you can get in non-fiction.I wish someone would make a movie with the same sensibility, it would be an instant classic. I also wish this book would come out on Kindle so one could search and highlight it. There are a lot of classic elements to this story, in every sense of the word. It's so good I want to read his four-volume treatment to see what I missed.

Obviously the product of a lifetime’s research, and useful as an overview of the conflict, but Kagan can’t seem to settle on a stable understanding of Thucydides’ objectivity/grasp of the facts/ relevance etc. There’s a lot of to & fro about Thucydides’ “revisionism” that doesn’t add up to much. The book really soars however when Kagan turns his mind to the strategic thinking of the major players. Worth reading for that aspect alone I guess

One of the best history books I've ever read. Clear, concise explanations of the causes, politics, military strategies, outcomes and consequences of the Peloponnesian conflict, the book is pitched just right for the interested student of ancient Greek warfare but without the requirement to be a military or historical scholar. Extremely enjoyable and informative.

出版されてから時間は経つが、このような本がベスト・セラーの一角を占めていたということは、いかに米国の知的レベルが高いかということを象徴している。無論、米国でも、この本を購入し、読んでいる人の多くは中間層以上の人々であろう。だが、ゲームの攻略本や安っぽい新書、漫画を基にしたビジネス書しか売れない国とは大いに知的レベルが異なっていることを示しているのが、本書の存在である。　興味深いのが、ペリクレスやアルキダモスといったアテナイ、スパルタの指導者が、いかにして戦争を回避しようとしていたことを強調している点である。これは、Ｄ・ケーガンの著名なペロポネソス戦争に関する四部作の一作目でも強調されていることではあるが、改めて著者の洞察力を痛感する。とりわけ、国内政治と国際政治が、それらの指導者の意思決定にどのような影響したのかという議論は、非常に興味深い。ケーガンの議論は、限られた資料の中で、歴史家がいかに自己の主張を行うという見本を提示していると言える。　トゥキュディデスの『戦史』は、今日の西欧でも一般教養の一つとして確固たる地位を築いている。一次資料とも言える『戦史』や、今日の歴史家が書いたペロポネソス戦争に関する文献を読むことは、西欧の文明及びその起源を理解する上での絶対条件であると言えよう。　しかし、知的退廃が著しい現在の日本において、それらの著作を手にし、挑戦しようとする人物は少ないであろう。教養どころか、世界的な常識や学問的な興味でさえ失いつつある日本人にとって、このような本は異次元の存在であるかもしれない。

enlightening

複雑なペロポネソス戦争に関する歴史の本。Donald Kaganはペロポネソス戦争の専門家（そんなのいるのかしらん？）かなにかじゃなかったと思います。複雑なペロポネソス戦争をたどりなおすという意味では面白かったです。しかし、情報はThucydidesより多いのは当たり前なのかもしれませんが、なぜかやはり薄味の気味もしました。私が歴史の記載よりも物語を強く求めて本を読む傾向にありますし、また史学の素養が皆無故に歴史書としての価値を評価する能力に欠けるという点が影響しているのでしょう。加えて、Thucydides(の英訳）と比較するからでしょうか？