Having enjoyed another book by Victor Davis Hanson, The Soul of Battle, I picked this one up when a copy was put up for sale at the Hayward, Wisconsin Public Library over the Memorial Day weekend. Since reading Thucydides freshman year at Grinnell College, the history of the Peloponnesian War has held interest. This account was no disappointment. Indeed, compared to others, it was original.The originality of Hanson's book is that he doesn't summarize Thucydides and the Oxyrhinchos Historian. He

This book put ancient Greece into an entirely new light for me. The war was sporadic, but altogether lasted about 30 years. Athens was the great democracy, with a large empire of states it had conquered. Athens was the technologically superior Greek state. It relied on its advanced navy with better ships and better naval tactics. Sparta was autocratic, technologically backward, and relied on its heavy-duty infantry. Sparta also had a large number of allied states in Peloponnesia.After a year or

Ancient Greece never seemed to be a cohesive, united lot as each city-state focused on its own objectives. Alas, this led to the eventual end of the Golden Age of Athens, which always puzzled me. The Spartans were also intriguing, a society built around masculinity and warfare and the complete opposite of its sibling neighbour of Athens. Why did these two giants fight and what were the consequences?Hanson provides a full chronology of the issues leading to battles won and lost and he also does a...

Hanson gives us an accessible account of the ancient conflict between democracy & oligarchy-- recommended for any student of military history.

For a layperson like myself this was an easy-to-read and fascinating introduction to the Peloponnesian War. Unorthodox in its approach, it was not strictly chronological. As the subtitle indicates, it tells HOW the two enemies fought this war. The title is taken from Thucydides, the historian, who wrote extensively on the war. He called it a "war like no other." Each chapter treated a theme: Why the war was fought; the Spartans' ultimately unsuccessful scorched earth policy in Attica; outbreak a...

Summary: An account of the Peloponnesian War tracing the history, the politics, the strategies, key figures, battles, and how the war was fought.The war went on for twenty-seven years toward the end of the fifth century BC. One of the first great works of history by Thucydides chronicled the battle. Both Athens and Sparta experienced horrendous losses culminating in the near total destruction of the once-great Athenian naval power at Aegospotami in 405.Victor Davis Hanson, a noted classical scho...

A War Like No Other is classical historian Victor Davis Hanson's offering on the Peloponnesian War - the 27 year struggle between the Delian League (Athens and its allies) and the Peloponnesian League (Sparta and its allies) that ran on and off again from 431 to 404 B.C.Hanson's book is perhaps also a "book like no other" if I may borrow a phrase. Despite the prominently placed quote for the New York Times on the front cover proclaiming that it is a contemporary retelling of the war, this is not...

I expected that I'd like this book. I thought it would be pretty good. Then I started reading it, and by the time I finished I realized it was great. I've read my handful of VDH, but this book is really right in his wheelhouse. A classicist by training, he hits this out of the park, but not necessarily in the way one would think. It is historically engrossing, and a very tight narrative, but more than that it is exceptionally moving. Because the Peloponnesian War is not examined merely from a st...

Hanson's A War Like No Other is an idiosyncratic take on the Peloponnesian War. Rather than a strictly chronological take on the major battles & personalities, it approaches each chapter with a theme on the major ways people died. So there's a chapter devoted to hoplite battle, sure. But also one on plague. It isn't completely without chronology -- the earlier chapters focus more on the early parts of the war and the later chapters on the later parts. But it does result in a fair amount of back

I enjoy reading classical Greek and Latin literature of all sorts: drama, poetry, and history, as well as books about these topics. So it was with the anticipation of something good that I sat down to read Hanson’s “A War Like No Other”. Hanson is a noted author, historian and classicist, so what could be more interesting than his take on the Peloponnesian war? A lot of things, actually.Not that “A War Like No Other” is bad. Hanson, as has been noted in many reviews, departs from the typical lin...

This, for me, was extremely useful to read. I have read Thucydides' work earlier this year. While some passages are obviously great, the sheer size of the work, and the amount of events, was baffling. A lot of the actions seemed nonsensical. Victor Davis Hanson's work comes in to fill the gaps. For example I was finally able to understand why Brasidas decides to attack in North, or why the Delian sanctuary needed to be purified. Or why the Spartans weren't simply able to break down the long wall...

Hanson recites a litany of abuse and tragedy concerning a multi-decade long war that ruined ancient Greece. It's really too much to digest. I'm just glad I didn't have to live through it. And in hindsight, the democratic Athenians were even larger bastards than the oligarchic Spartans. Go figure. Maybe there is a good reason for the Electoral College after all.

This book is an examination of Thucydides and bits of Xenophon and Herodotus accounts of the Peloponnesian War told in a non-chronological manner. It instead groups events into categories such as Horse/Walls/Armor etc.. and then examining events using this aspect it represents.This is good reading and a well written account of the war and I enjoyed and learned quite a bit from it, this being said if you do not know the history of the war and have never read Thucydides it might be a bit of a go a...

First rate. It reads like a Work of Fiction. If you have read Thucydides The History of the Peloponnese War then this is the next step.

Excellent detailed study of the 27 year war/massacre between Athens and Sparta that involved all Greece and even spread to Sicily from 431-404 BC. The author breaks the conflict down into ten specific areas each with its own chapter providing the reader with a clear picture of the oftentimes confused Peloponnesian War. You need two bookmarks because the footnotes have their own section and are as illuminating and interesting as the text itself.

I thoroughly enjoyed Victor Davis Hanson’s “A War Like No Other,” which I read as both an e-book and Audible audiobook. Additionally, I read it concurrently with “The Landmark Thucydides” (also Five Stars - look for my review at Goodreads.com). Both books I feel are indispensable to the military or classical historian, as well as anyone interested in a more complete understanding of the Peloponnesian War in particular, and Greek and Western culture in general. “A War Like No Other” is a solid Fi...

A War Like No Other retold the Peloponnesian war by thoroughly explaining each aspect of how the Athenians and Spartans fought and strategized. This was not a strictly chronological account, but he gives general time frames about what is being discussed. My favorite chapters detailed how the Spartan strategy of raiding was largely unimpactful, the effects of the plague, and the explanation of naval warfare. I always assumed that Triremes and navys had a greater range than they did. A consequence...

I almost quit so many times in the first chapter. He seemed fixated on forcing uninteresting modern parallels and made a lot of problematic statements, such as harping on this being a "civil war" and insisting that Pericles didn't have a plan.I'm glad I finished, because it was full of a lot of helpful information (big-picture trends and cultural background, etc). But throughout, it suffered from sloppy writing. E.g. three sentences building to a point, but then the use of the exactly opposite c...

I started this book under the impression that this would be a conservative's take on the Juan Cole Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East model of history- an extended analysis of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan told through the lens of another historical incident. Despite signaling in this direction in his first chapter, Hanson actually hews closely to the historical material at hand. The organization of the narrative by common war experiences (fire, disease, armor, horses, walls, sh...

Victor Davis Hanson, military historian turned Op-Ed rabble-rouser, holds firm to his belief that there are important lessons to be learned from the past. He has written extensively on the subject (The Western Way of War; Carnage and Culture; Between War and Peace). As a "modern Machiavelli" (Daily Telegraph), he has bent the ears of policy makers all the way up to the West Wing. Critics are impressed by Hanson's ability to bring all the machinations of the Greeks alive in his thematic chapters....

This is a fantastic work by Victor Davis Hanson. Word to the wise: read a chronological history of the Peloponnesian War before you pick this up. I made that mistake and at many times was lost as VDH jumped back and forth.This book is an examination of how the war was fought and is divided accordingly. Each chapter examines another element of the war (Walls, Ships, etc.) and its impact. It is also an engrossing read for any student of the classics. VDH caught me completely by surprise when his e...

As an enthusiast of ancient history, I was excited to start this book, that being said, it wasn't in a style that I enjoyed. Hanson broke down the war, not into stages, or years, but into the different styles of warfare. A lot of back and forth through history, and at times repetitive. I found Hanson's analysis of the political situations behind the military operations to be cursory and left much to be desired.

One of the author's goals in this book was to talk about the war from a top-level perspective, skipping the chronology of the battles or events. My eyes glazed over these lists of random facts or situations. I apparently need the structure of chronology in a history book because I much preferred the parts that were explained in sequence (e.g., the siege of Syracuse or Plataea). So while the information presented was interesting, I did not enjoy the format of this book.

He really didn't have what I wanted. There were parts from this book that really helped my research but overall, he went off topic way too often!Would loved for it to be more relevant and to the point. Your fancy comparisons were boring to read. But like I said, I got some cool stuff out of this book.

This was an excellent history by one America's best classicists. Helps to have read Thucydides first. Would recommend to anyone who enjoys history at all, not just ancient or military history

A War Like No Other: How the Athenians & Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War by Victor Davis HansonThe author is quite an expert in his field and a master historian; if not, he has fooled me. I reviewed Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War several years ago, and his narrative is different than Hanson's, telling the war more as a story (or re-telling of Thucydides' account) than a wider overview. Hanson's is the most thorough and detailed. The 27+ year Peloponnesian War is an inexhaustible sour...

Outstanding overview of exactly what the title says--'how' they fought this titanic struggle. Really should be 4.5 stars, because what could you give Thucydides if you gave this 5? This is a fairly long read for a short book with little if any 'fluff'. Obviously a LOT of Thucydides references and Xenophon for the later portion of the war, but also many excellent books and articles cited among the numerous footnotes. Maps are adequate to good, perhaps not uniformly excellent but an account of thi...

I enjoyed Hanson’s explanation of the Peloponnesian War. I previously read Thucydides in graduate school, and so having that context certainly helped me understand some of Hanson’s assertions here. Hanson places much needed emphasis on the physics of the battlefield. Modern readers of the Peloponnesian War cannot intuit that the average Spartan or Athenian cavalryman was about 5’2’’ and 120 pounds, or that the normal hoplite warrior was only a bit more robust at 5’5’’ and 140 pounds. By way of c...

This book is absolutely fantastic. VDH does wonderfully explaining to you what the actual war looked like, which can be such a challenge without ever having seen it like we have with modern wars through video, pictures and whatnot. From ships to armies to plagues to horses, VDH outlines each aspect and theater of conflict in painstaking detail. The lessened focus on chronology was a tad confusing early on given that I knew next to nothing about the war, but it is still embedded enough to where i...

Let me first say that a three star rating for me is a good book that I would recommend to people who are interested in the subject matter. I purchased this book because I started Thucydides history of the Peloponnesian War and felt that I really would not understand anything unless I read some more background first. What surprised me the most was how, in the space of a hundred years all the notable things happened in Helenistic civilization. Defense against invading Persians, battle of marathon,...