How to Think about War

“This invaluable collection presents the most vivid, thought-provoking, and important speeches from Thucydides’s work, which have inspired the analysis of politics, war, and international relations ever since. Johanna Hanink’s new translation makes them fully accessible to a modern audience, and her excellent notes both set them in their ancient context and draw out their significance for modern debates.”–Neville Morley, author of Classics: Why It Matters “Hanink’s accessible translation and commentary cut an easy path through the dense Greek of the famous speeches in Thucydides’s History, avoiding the snare of reading them at face value. The result is a compelling illustration of the danger of using Thucydides to defend contemporary political decisions.”–Donna Zuckerberg, author of Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age “This slim, elegant book punches well above its weight, with striking, lucid translations of key speeches from Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War. The artfully curated ancient texts within these pages speak with prescience and complexity to the precarious moment in which we now live. Johanna Hanink’s How to Think about War is essential reading for anyone who wishes to know how great military powers fall, democracies implode, and empires end.”–Bryan Doerries, author of The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today

Johanna Hanink is associate professor of classics at Brown University. Her books include The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity. She lives in Rhode Island.