The First Clash

Military historian Jim Lacey reexamines the Battle of Marathon, asking why it happened, how it was fought and whether it really saved Western civilization. Taking Herodotus as his starting point, he rebuilds the setting of the fifth century B.C. and the tactics and strategy of the battle, including how many troops each side may have fielded and who actually led the Greeks. Lacey rejects the old myths of Athenian inexperience and Persian arrogance, and describes how the Athenian phalanx shocked and broke the heavily armed Persian army. He follows the aftermath, when Marathon's fighters became a kind of Greatest Generation, and questions the idea that the battle proved a superior Western way of war.

A What CEOs are reading feature listed it as a book read by Dow chief executive Andrew Liveris.