Why did the Peace of Nicias fail to reconcile Athens and Sparta? Donald Kagan examines the years between the signing of the peace treaty and the destruction of the Athenian expedition to Sicily in 413 B.C. The principal figure in the narrative is the Athenian politician and general Nicias, whose policies shaped the treaty and whose military strategies played a major role in the attack against Sicily.
"This is a solid piece of scholarship, a readable, consistent, and understandable account of a difficult period in Greek history, and rife with astute and provocative observations on Thucydides."
The Historian
"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 unbear
George Steiner, The New Yorker
"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."
