

A War Like No Other
How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Narrator: Bob Souer
Unabridged: 13 hr 58 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 10/22/2019
Categories: Nonfiction, History, Ancient History, Wars
Synopsis
Hanson compellingly portrays the ways Athens and Sparta fought on land and sea, in city and countryside, and details their employment of the full scope of conventional and non-conventional tactics, from sieges to targeted assassinations, torture, and terrorism. He also assesses the crucial roles played by warriors such as Pericles and Lysander, artists, among them Aristophanes, and thinkers including Sophocles and Plato.
Hanson's perceptive analysis of events and personalities raises many thought-provoking questions: Were Athens and Sparta like America and Russia, two superpowers battling to the death? Is the Peloponnesian War echoed in the endless, frustrating conflicts of Vietnam, Northern Ireland, and 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 schism between liberals and conservatives? Hanson daringly brings the facts to life and unearths the often-surprising ways in which the past informs the present.