The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, 1st Edition

“Kagan’s book is based on complete control of both the ancient evidence and modern scholarship.”-Choice “Kagan’s book is a contribution of considerable distinction, scrupulously fair, carefully argued, and lucidly written. And, what is more, it is persuasive… Kagan sets out the story in detail and with acumen. The case has been adumbrated before-but never presented with such thoroughness.”-Journal of Interdisciplinary History “A profound analysis of the relation of strategy to politics, a sympathetic but searching critique of Thucydides’ masterpiece, and a trenchant assessment of the voluminous modern literature on the war.”-Bernard Knox, The Atlantic Monthly (reviewing the four-volume series) “The temptation to acclaim Kagan’s four volumes as the foremost work of history produced in North America in the twentieth century is vivid… Here is an achievement that not only honors the criteria of dispassion and of unstinting scruple which mark the best of modern historicism but honors its readers. To read Kagan’s ‘History of the Peloponnesian War’ at the present hour is to be almost unbearably tested.”-George Steiner, The New Yorker (reviewing the four-volume series)

Donald Kagan is Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale University.