Recommendations from our site
“Thucydides is the single best treatment of international relations, foreign policy and military affairs that exists. It is the best description of what life in a multipolar world is like, what politics and war are like for the units involved, of the basic realities of international relations. It has no single line.” Read more...
The best books on US Foreign Policy
Gideon Rose, International Relation
“when Thucydides is trying to account for the Peloponnesian War, an extraordinary war in the fifth century BC in which the Greek city-state system tore itself apart, he says the basic cause of the war was the rise in power of Athens and the fear that created in Sparta. He points out that when there is this kind of fear, and there is a belief that war is inevitable, it can itself become a cause of war. Some of the greatest wisdom on international politics and the rise and fall of power goes back to Thucydides in the fifth century BC.” Read more...
The best books on Global Power
Joseph Nye, International Relation
“It was the trauma of Thucydides’ lifetime and in the book he sought to explain why the war had gone on so long and why Athens lost it.” Read more...
The best books on Totalitarian Russia
Robert Service, Historian
