About the book
Thucydides, an Athenian who served as a general in the war he describes, recounts the conflict between the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League and the Athenian-led Delian League, fought from 431 to 404 BC. The account appears unfinished and breaks off mid-sentence in 411 BC. Thucydides dated events by year, dividing each into a summer campaign season and a quieter winter, and he gave the gods no active role, treating history as the result of human choices. Long speeches, among them the funeral oration of Pericles, carry the arguments; some he heard himself and others he rebuilt from eyewitnesses. Scholars still debate whether it is detached, scientific history or a carefully crafted work of literature.
Ryan Holiday included it in his 24 books to hone a strategic mind, reading it as a study of commanders such as Pericles, Brasidas and Alcibiades and promising that readers who finish it will not forget it.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Ryan Holiday (Founder/Brass Check)
This book – of a long forgotten war – really functions as a biography and strategic analysis of some of the greatest minds in the history of war. We have Pericles, Brasidas, Alcibiades and many others. The anecdotes and the stories in this book are timeless. If you make your way all the way through it, I promise you will not forget it. Because the war was so long, involved so many different countries and was so varied (sea, land, siege, politics), it basically covers every type of situation you can think of. Think of this book as a textbook. Read it.
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