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A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War | 
 enlarge | Author: Victor Hanson
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Rating:  54 reviews
Sales Rank: 27170
Media: Paperback
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0812969707
Dewey Decimal Number: 938
EAN: 9780812969702
ASIN: 0812969707
Publication Date: September 12, 2006
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Product Description
One of our most provocative military historians, Victor Davis Hanson has given us painstakingly researched and pathbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the twenty-first century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with our most urgent modern concerns to create his most engrossing work to date, A War Like No Other.
Over the course of a generation, the Hellenic city-states of Athens and Sparta fought a bloody conflict that resulted in the collapse of Athens and the end of its golden age. Thucydides wrote the standard history of the Peloponnesian War, which has given readers throughout the ages a vivid and authoritative narrative. But Hanson offers readers 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, and important insight into how these events echo in the present.
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 nonconventional 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 “red state—blue state” schism between liberals and conservatives, a cultural war that manifestly controls military policies? Hanson daringly brings the facts to life and 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.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 49 more reviews...
 A history like no other. October 13, 2005
R. Klappenbach (Chevy Chase, MD)
97 out of 106 found this review helpful
Dr. Hanson has taken this well studied war and approached it from a a very interesting perspective. Rather than the standard chronologic retelling (done recently and well by Donald Kagan), Hanson delves into the facets of the conflict such as ships, seiges, horses etc. to craft a readable and stimulating exegesis of the twenty-seven year bloodbath. I say readable because his writing is fluid and almost conversational. You almost feel as though your in a lecture hall. My only criticism (which doesn't cost the book a star) refers to the quality of the maps ...they don't seem to add very much to the text other than simply showing where the various cities or islands are located. Personally, I prefer the tactical maps and would have liked to see more of them, especially for episode such as Mantinea , Delium, and the late naval battles. That aside, this was a wonderful experience. I hope Dr. Hanson will someday do the same for the Punic or other Roman wars.
A War Like No Other is an Illuminating Study of ancient Greek warfare November 10, 2005
C. M Mills (Knoxville Tennessee)
94 out of 107 found this review helpful
Victor David Hanson is the famous classicist who has soared to the top of the best seller non-fiction charts with outstanding
historical works! I have never read a Hanson work without being informed about the way war in all its nefarious aspects has influenced the course of Western civilization from the Greeks to the present day of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In this new seminal work Dr. Hanson provides a modern examination of the Peloponessian war (the first major Civil War in World History) between democratic and empire expanding Athens in Attica and the militaristic oligarchic society of Sparta in
southern Greece. Throughout these pages the author quotes the classical writer Thucydides whose book on the Peloponessian War
fought in the 5th ca. B.C. is told from the perspective of an Athenian general officer. Thucydides was skeptical of human nature and critical of warfare so he is still pertinent today!
Instead of a blow by blow account of the horrific lengthy war the author focuses on the major factors in the conflict with
chapters devoted to such subjects as:
Walls-the importance of siege warfare
Horses-how mounted Syracuse calvary forces destroyed the Athenian invaders on Sicily.
Plague-a brilliant discussion of how plague ravaged Athens during the war.
Ships-the crucial importance of sea power chronicling how landlocked Sparta developed a powerful naval force which defeated the vaunted Athenian navy and won the war.
Land-how crop destruction and fire destroyed the lives of many
bucolic farmers.
Throughout his writing Hanson wants us to see how devasting is warfare to the common soldier/civilian drawn into the horrific
maelstrom of war. Hanson does not glorify war but like General William Sherman manifestly makes evident the fact that war is
hell.
In these pages you will meet such men as Pericles; explore the
building, manning and fighting done on Greek warships called
triremes; understand ancient economies and witness brutality in
the several slaughters of this ancient war.
Any educated reader will find insights and parallels to modern warfare in these many pages.
This book like all of Dr. Hanson's outstanding historical
works is highly recommended!
Victor has done it again October 11, 2005
Janell M. Ramos (CA)
36 out of 47 found this review helpful
Victor's knowledge about the ancient Greeks and his ability to make connections to the modern world are unparalleled. With each book he renews interest in a world that has made and continues to make an impact on our modern life. I have read many accounts of the Peloponnesian War, but this one made it new all over again.Waiting for Odysseus
Democracy can lose November 13, 2005
Shalom Freedman (Jerusalem,Israel)
26 out of 28 found this review helpful
Hanson is one of the most readable military- political writers.. He is able to see the whole picture and thus to relate what he sees with a special kind of clarity. In an interview he gave to FrontPageCom. he spoke about a certain parallel between Athens of that time, and the United States of today. In both places it is severe domestic criticism that undermines seriously the war effort. It seems to me that Hanson is very much concerned about the precedent of Democracy losing. He believes that a democratic nation must have a strategy for winning the war, and not for simply carrying it on indefinitely.
I suspect however that the great enjoyment of this book does not relate to the parallels between past and present, but rather to the dramatic, tragic story of the Pelopennesian War as analyzed in this work.
Because of his depth of knowledge, enthusiasm for his subject the parallels and implications he draws from the Athens-Sparta war to other wars, are by and large convincing.
It seems to me that if there is one book President Bush should be reading these days. It is this one.
Spot the Reviewers who did NOT Read the Book January 2, 2006
Double Espresso in Decaf Town (MN, USA)
21 out of 26 found this review helpful
There are a couple of reviews here wherein the reviewer has certainly not read the book. Those reviews, other than being characterized by low scores, essentially fault Hanson on his contemporary views and not his brilliant effort explain where the Greeks were at the start of the war and how they ended the war. It is about the descent of a people from their original structured, almost ritualistic, ways of waging war to a people who wage all-out war in new and ultimately horrific ways. And, in the process, VDH points out how its legacy was to turn the west into effecient war-makers once it abondoned previous restraints. It is part tragedy and part military history and part sociology layered upon classical analysis. With, of course, parallels drawn with other examples ranging from WWII, Viet Nam, and Iraq (of course) amongst others. Ignore the rants of people with axes to grind, they did not read the book. I knocked one star only because you are best served coming to this book with some understanding of the war as VDH does not spend much time explaining the history but commenting on it instead. Wonderful book, well worth the read, but may need Kagan's book as a companion book.
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