This book, and the other three in the series, are for serious readers only. But presumably you know that, if you're reading this. You'll need to read Thucydides first, at least once; it wouldn't hurt to read Xenophon's Hellenica as well, not to mention all the extant plays of Aristophanes. Oh, and maybe a history or two on the Greco-Persian Wars.

If you can do/have done all that, then these four volumes are a rare treat. I think Kagan is very clever. He writes sober, judicious history, but he does it in a very amiable, companionable way. You get the sense that one of your favorite professors from your college days has dropped by to tell you a little story, one of those "little stories" that expands and expands until you lose track of time and place, drawn into his web. I think Kagan wrote these books that way deliberately, with an eye toward a wider audience than the usual scholarly tome. Perhaps that engenders some snickering or sneering among the academic types. Let them sneer. These books are nothing if not highly readable.

How does Kagan stack up as a scholar? I don't know. He certainly provides an exhaustive overview of the scholarship written up to the time these volumes were written, and he's always very clear to describe where he stands in contrast to other scholars. How those scholars view him, and what scholarship has concluded since the publication of these books, remain unknown to me. I'm a serious reader, but not *that* serious. My days of digging through scholarly journals and publications to find anything and everything on a given topic are long behind me.

It hardly matters, though. These books are of the highest value strictly for their sheer entertainment value. If they are also of the highest schloraly caliber, then so much the better. But to tell you the truth, I wouldn't care if Kagan was a baldfaced liar. I would enjoy the books all the same.

Athens and Sparta's relations peaked during the Persian wars; thereafter, as their respective trading empires filled the vacuum left by Persia's retreat, these two city-states became involved in a bipolar power struggle, of a kind which (as Kagan relates) has since repeated itself numerous times in history. Kagan has a truly inspired ability to draw factually apposite parallels between different periods, and in this account, as rival nations spiral towards a cataclysmic conflict, one can't help thinking of pre-WW1 Europe and/or the post-WW2 Cold War. If the Sparta-Athens relationship was truly bipolar, however, peace might have prevailed: the real trigger, or at least catalyst, to war was the provocation of the intermeddling third party, Corinth. Kagan not only relates the Thucydidian chronology, he also interposes his own corrections and clarifications and, in the process, brings this tragic war to life for the modern reader.

It is difficult for me to describe the genius that lies behind Kagan's magisterial four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War. Kagan's command of his subject matter is breath taking. But the reason that you want this to be THE book you read about the Peloponnesian War is as follows:

Kagan provides the single most compelling synthesis of the reasons the war took place together with a beautifully measured study of the participant's motivations. His technique is brilliant. First the bare facts are set out. Then Thucydides opinions are canvassed. There follows a startlingly lucid summary of the major points of view as published by other historians. Then Kagan offers HIS view. At the conclusion you slap yourself on the knee and find yourself invariably saying, "Well, of COURSE, it's OBVIOUS".

But, in point of fact, it isn't obvious at all - but Kagan makes it SEEM obvious. And for that he required, and exhibits, a truly astounding understanding of human nature.

I have seen it written that Kagan lapses into un-translated Latin, Greek and German. I went back to my copies to see if I could find examples of this - and was unable to find more than a handful (if one doesn't count the footnotes - and even there foreign languages are scarce).

Kagan's principal thesis in this, the first of the four books, is that the Peloponnesian war was NOT, contrary to Thucydides' opinion, inevitable, but was in fact avoidable up to the last moment. This thesis is developed with tremendous force of logic. The prose is fluid, and even limpid.

You will need maps. The first volume contains none. Though the second volume has a few. My suggestion is that you have the Landmark Thucydides to hand - it has seemingly THOUSANDS of maps. But I also recommend the "Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World" -- a MUST for any person with a classical bent. I am not sure one needs to have read Thucydides - as some have suggested. After all, Kagan's object is to write THE comprehensive history of that event. But this clearly is a university level text. I read the Landmark Thucydides first - though I am not sure I benefited from it. You will certainly want to read it afterwards.

Kagan's understanding of this ancient conflict prepared him very nicely for an extraordinary book, "On the Origins of War and the Preservations of Peace." If ever there was a MUST READ book for our times, it is that one. In this book, Kagan develops a thesis on the origins of war and provides a trenchant recipe for the avoidance of war.

I rate this book on a par with Ronald Syme's "Roman Revolution" (Though HERE is someone guilty of not bothering to translate greek and latin for we plebs!). You need read NO other modern account.

I abhorred History when I was at school. When I've matured and grown more realist I've started to consider the importance of history to try understand what happens around me. I started with The Penguin History of the World" by J.M. Roberts; I don't recommend that book for beginners though it's a good book (I actually hadn't courage enough to finish it, it exists in audiobook too). This book is written by five american scholars which I think gives it a more general scope than others written by a single author. It includes a CD-ROM with the whole book plus a multimedia summary of human history read by a beautiful voice, photographs, Questionnaires, Quizzes, maps and the Complete Webster's New World Dictionary. There's an exclusive webpage for the book with quizzes, add-on reports and links to other history websites, there you can have your questions answered and your exercises corrected (I haven't used it yet though). Sincerely I didn't expect this book to be so good. The CD-ROM is the same for each of the separate books or for the complete version, so, buying the first or second part alone you have the full CD-ROM encompassing all world history.

No book captures the authentity of world civilizations as this one does. A masterpiece

Athens had already been bled white by the Archidamian war; it had lost its fleet and the flower of its youth in the Sicilian expedition. Here, Sparta rejoins the conflict as a full-blooded belligerent, and Persia weighs in as a sponsor. For all that, Athens still puts up a hell of a fight, scratching together a new fleet and defending its Aegean and Black Sea possessions with vitality and imagination. Yet, like Napoleon's armies after the Russian winter, a brilliant victory only defers the outcome, whereas it will only take one serious defeat for the whole war effort to collapse. At length, this defeat arrives when the Spartans get serious about naval tactics and recall Lysander to administer the decisive blow. Another great character in this saga, the Athenian exile Alcabiades, reappears, first as a Spartan advisor, then as a friend to the Persian King, then back to Athens as the prodigal son. Not until Talleyrand will one encounter such a serial turncoat.

This is an outstanding book that provides an interdependent perspective of the processes that have shaped our world with a comprehensive coverage of the four great valley civilizations of Africa and Asia plus the two early civilizations of America. Technological advances are considered from a comparative global perspective. It provides an exceptional treatment of the different civilizations that have existed in World History.

This book is the first in a series of four covering the massive confrontation that destroyed the greek world. The subject matter is Thucydides Peloponesian War which Kagan manages to give many new insights into. With his thourough analysis he looks at the archealogical evidence as well as the literature in a way that gives pause to those judging Thucydides to be the first "unbiased" historian. Thucydides used the facts for his own purposes and left out important details about the epic conflict that would leave a blemish on his side of the story.
In the series Kagan wonders at some of the details of the Peloponesian War that remain unexplained, for example, how Pericles expected Sparta to wear itself out invading the Attic country side.
Some of these questions leave inexplicable holes in Thucydides narrative.
Overall an excellent comapnion to the Peloponesian War that throws a critical light on all that is said in that tomb.

The first of Kagan's epics had a "Guns of August" feel; the second, with its deconstruction of the false "victory' of the Archidamian War, felt Tolstoyan; the parallel for the Sicilian Expedition, however, is painful and obvious: this was Athens' Vietnam. The mighty commercial power decided to cement its influence in a far flung land across the sea; what resulted was a massive haemorraging of blood and treasure, and complete defeat at the hands of small provincial armies. Among the characters we meet is the incomparable Alciabades, the Athenian general who advocates the expedition, only to be arrested, and escape, just as things begin to turn sour. Another terrific retelling of the great disaster. The battle narrative around Syracuse has a definite Dien Bien Phu feel.

I bought this book for my Western Civilization class and I was very happy with it. The authors did a great job. Particularly pleasing was the way the book before each chapter had the timeline for all the events covered in that specific chapter. This helped one get a better grip on what happened first and what came after that. I would recommend this book.

An great book for understanding about leadership in ancient Athens. Since Pericles was elected to the position of general once a year he was required to walk a political tightrope. This book will give you a good feel for the difficulties of yearly elections. You will not get great detail for the life of Pericle beyond Plutarch. Fans of leadership, democracy, warfare and international relations this book is a must!

In reading Kagan's epochal Peloponnesian War series (if Amazon had a six-star rating that series would deserve it) one is struck by the relative paucity of material present on one of the central characters of that period, Perikles of Athens. While Kagan gives his usual detailed treatment of events, what led up to many of Perikles' attitudes and intellectual precepts is left untreated.

A reader lucky enough to possess this volume will find the time spent in reading it in parallel with the four-volume magnum opus to be well spent. It supplies a view of the great man and his city with a color and richness that truly makes the reader's cup overflow, and might, if treated in this detail in the larger series, have slowed the latter's breakneck pace to a crawl. It is, of course, wonderful as a standalone reference.

Readers unfamiliar with Professor Kagan are missing a real treat. His prose is lean and concise, and its vividness lights the sometimes bland subject material of ancient Greek history with clarity and a contemporary relevance that is always illuminating and occasionally breathtaking. This is not "pop" history, but it is so well-written that it achieves the latter's accessibility without its superfluity. If more ancient history were written this way it would a much more popular subject of study.

Donald Kagan offers here a well-written popular account of the birth of democracy in ancient Greece. This book represents the capstone to a lifetime of research, reflection, writing (just check Amazon's list of his books; Kagan is perhaps the top writer in English on the Peloponnesian War), and teaching on classical Greece and illustrates both Kagan's eloquence and his belief that we can learn from the successes and failures of democracy in Ancient Athens. His Pericles is a hero but a tragic hero; his attempt to educate the entire population of Athens to achieve excellence reached an impressive level of success, but his relentlessly rational moderation refused to take into account emotional reactions of both individuals and states abroad and at home and helped bring on an unnecessary and disastrous war. His portrait of Periclean Athens offers many valuable analogies with contemporary democracy - and many warnings for us as well. Along with W.G. Forrest's The Emergence of Greek Democracy, sadly out of print, this is the best account of Greek History for the general reader, for its substance is intriguing, and it is a "great read."

By the rank,subject, and age of this book, I doubt many, if anyone, will read this review. Thus, if you are reading these words, you are probably one of the few who already enjoys reading about ancient history and are just trying to decide which book in this area you will read next. If this is you, read this book.

Personally I knew some things, but not much about this war. Kagan discusses, in detail, the views of three of four historians on the causes and origins of the war, how the war could of been avoided, and how it was fought. What is maddening is that he often repeats what two or three people say, and then tells you why they are are wrong.

If you are not familiar with the war, this approach can be confusing. However, if you have time or already familiar with the "Archidamian War", this book is very satisfying. After reading this book, you will have a clearer understanding about the war and the people who fought it.

Personally, I am a political junkie. I found myself so fascinated with the stunning details about the passions and politics of these people that they seemed as clear and as relevent to me as any story in the news today.

This is Kagan's gift. With marvelous use of analogies plucked from every time and corner of history, he shows how Thuclyides was right, events repeat themselves. The form is always a little different, but often almost the same as some past drama. This 2500 years old war is relevent today, not just for drama or historians, but for both moderen politicians and military stratigists. If we choose to listen.

My only concern for this book is that, with the gaps in the records, much of Kagan work is as much fiction as history. He tells us what he believes to be the most probable reasons why this event occured or why something else happened. But, in the end, those are only educated deductions from the record, not what actually happened. Kagan, in particular, sees man as more rational creature then, in my view, he actually is. Men and women often do things for no reasons or, for very bad ones. Kagan assumes city-states were more rational then men, when a city-state is just a collection of men. Men who are very irrational at times.

Still, this is a small criticism. The book is great. Read it and remember, it is easier to learn from other's mistakes then to make them yourself. Thank you Mr. Kagan.

This is perhaps the most important of Kagan's four books, because it contains the central plank of his thesis. Even though the Archidamian War closed with a tactical victory for the Athenians, as Kagan shows, the war (the opening conflict in the thirty year Pelopponesian wars) left the city-state economically crushed and strategically vulnerable. In this respect, the thesis in this book reminds me of Tolstoy's thesis in War and Peace concerning the Battle of Borodino. Tolstoy had argued that the outcome of this conflict (a nominal win for Napoleon) was in fact a strategic catastrophe for the French. Similarly, Pericles, for all his brilliance, fixed upon a strategy throughout this war which bled Athens white and left it utterly unprepared for another long-term struggle. A powerful history indeed.

I agree with Mr. Lafianza's review except for his criticism. At first the analysis may be annoying, but one should quickly see its benefits. By looking at several different explanations and pointing out their failings, Kagan reiterates his main themes, strengthens his own point, underlines the importance of certain events, and makes understanding these events clearer for the layman by slowly moving through the events and never going so fast that a given situation does not make sense.

The book is wonderful and if the subject interests you, there is none better.

In, On the Origins of War, Donald Kagan both (1) makes a case study of the causes of Ancient Conficts, and more modern ones, and (2) gives his suggestions on how they could have been avoided. These Wars include the Punic Wars and WWII, the Peloponisian War and WWI, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

After the first war between Rome and Carthage, the Carthigians were given a free hand in Spain upto the Ebro River. When Rome noticed that Carthage was building a mighty army there, Rome gave advance notice that it would probably break its treaty with them, sent a group of ambassadors that insulted Hannibal, but failed to send troops to awe or suppress them.

Hannibal reacted by laying siege to an allied city. Rome, who could have reacted and attacked Hannibal in Spain, did nothing. For almost nine months, Hannibal lay siege to this city. Once his siege was successful, Hannibal turned his eyes, and his elephants, towards Rome. The second Punic Wars had begun.

After the first World War, the allies forced Germany to sign a treaty which blamed the entire war on them. The Germans were also forced to pay hugely disproportionate reparations, dismember their country, essentially disband their own army, and watch their ally Austria-Hungry be sliced into several new nations. Then, after doing almost everything possible to embitter the Germans, the allies disarmed. Slowly at first, but almost continually until WWII broke out, the Germans rearmed themselves.

Hitler accelerated this pace, but he essentially continued the policies of his predecessors. Like Hannibal before him, Hitler then began to attack allies or potential allies of his rival. Hitler attack on Poland, which started WWII, was only attacked after Austria has been "rejoined" with Germany and Czechoslovakia had been conquered.

Thus both the Romans and the Allies had been given advance notice that an enemy may be preparing to fight. Rome was given nine months, the Allies were given, at least, six years. Neither, however, seemed to recognize the threat which was coming. In Rome's case, part of this ignorance may have been due to overconfidence after winning the prior conflict. For the Allies, much of their ignorance was based on their horror over the results of the last war combined with an underappreciation for the anger which was swelling in Germany.

Now, could either of these wars have been avoided? Kagan seems to think so. He describes the different times and ways both wars could have be prevented. I tend to disagree, in part. My disagreement stems from the unexpected. Kagan, in part, states that if you insult a rival or opponent, you should be prepared for a reaction. However, people plan for things in the future, based on what happened in the past. This is why we study history.

Hannibal acted and fought in ways that were almost unheard of during that time. How could the Romans expect Hannibal to cross the Alps with his elephants, when nothing quite like that had occurred in the past. Hitler, as well, acted much more quickly then anyone at that time thought was possible. His own generals were ready to begin a coup starting from the "Sudenland" crisis to the invasion of Austria.

Still, agree or not, this book is interesting and insightful. The other sections, dealing with WWI, are also very well done. Personally, I didn't like the Cuban Missile Crisis section, but it was only a small part of the book. Overall, this book is very, very good. For those who question why we should study history, please read this book. For those of you who already enjoy history, "Origins of War" is a good addition to your library.

I found Kagan's book thorough in its factual content but was a little disappointed that the case studies on the Athens-Sparta war and the Second Punic War were confined to periods preceding the conflicts without going further into its aftermath and consequences. The writer assumes that the reader already has some general background knowledge of the surrounding facts.

One sobering point was that in the late 19th century, the European powers thought they were enlightened enough never to go to war again. What was supposed to come was a new period of trade and prosperity to replace primitive tribal warring. Sadly we know different. Kagan gives a timely, prophetic warning that wars have been with us since time immemorial and with the threat of thermonuclear weapons, the next big one could be the last if we're not careful.

The last section on the Cuban Missile Crisis with references to recently declassified documents shows that contrary to public perception, JFK was indecisive and vacillating, allowing the Russians to press home a poker-faced advantage over the missile placement and the Berlin refugee exodus, when they had poor cards all along.

Overall it was a readable fascinating study. To keep the peace, everyone needs to know the reasons why states go to war in the first place.

Mr. Kagan compares the origins of four wars, the Peloponnesian War, the First World War, the second Punic War, the Second World War and a crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, that did not lead to war. Mr. Kagan main point is that most countries involved in these wars had no real want or need of war, and indeed, the steps taken by the leaders to avoid war often lead to war. He recommends an aggressive foreign policy approach in which potential adversaries clearly know your intentions.

His description of the Cuban Missile Crisis in particularly instructive. American's military strength is far greater than the Soviet Union but President. Kennedy is a very indecisive, always afraid of miscalculation. First, the Bay of Pigs was a flop and an embarrassment. President Kennedy then tries to show Khrushchev how tough he was in Vienna but comes across as very weak. Mr. Kennedy then takes no action on the Berlin Wall. Khrushchev is now certain that Kennedy can always be pushed and so sends missiles to Cuban. War was only avoided because of Americans "great military strength that brought safety in the crisis."

Highly recommended.