Author: Tim Graczewski
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The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: The Persian Challenge (2015) by Paul Rahe
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. The same could even be said for its title. Paul Rahe’s latest effort, “The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: The Persian Challenge,” is an excellent book, it just doesn’t have all that much to do with the grand strategy of classical Sparta. Rather, it is…
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Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy (2009) by John R. Hale
John Hale was an undergraduate student of the famed classicist Donald Kagan at Yale in the early 1970s when he first fell in love with ancient Greek history. Hale was also a member of the college crew team and was thus intimately familiar with the mechanics and challenges of strenuous rowing, a unique and valuable…
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The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (1976) by Paul Kennedy
Paul Kennedy made quite a splash with “The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery” when it first came out in 1976, although I’m not entirely sure why. His primary theses – that the rise and fall of sea power track closely with that of economic power, and that the effective exercise of military might…
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Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (1990) by Donald Kagan
The great Greek historian Thucydides remarked that Athens in the 430s BC “was in name a democracy, but really a government by the first person.” That first man – “protos amer” in Greek – was Pericles, son of Xanthippus, the hero of the Battle of Mycale against the Persians in 479, mentee of the radical…
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German Army 1933-1945 (1990) by Matthew Cooper
In Poland in September 1939 – and then in even more dramatically in France eight months later – the German army shocked the world with the speed and audacity of their armored invasions that seemed to break all the rules. It was an entirely new style of war called blitzkrieg – “Lightning War.” Conceptualized during…
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How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World (2014) by Steven Johnson
The modern American home is a veritable wonderland of technical innovations: clean water on demand, central heating and air conditioning, wireless Internet and telephony, flat screen electronics, and inexpensive lighting, to name just a few. “How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World” by popular science writer Steven Johnson describes, at…
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The Honey And The Hemlock: Democracy & Paranoia In Ancient Athens & Modern America (1991) by Eli Sagan
I wanted to love this book. It directly addresses a topic that has been vexing since I began studying ancient Athenian democracy in earnest this past year: Why were classical Athenians – both individually and collectively – capable of both genius and stupidity? How could the same people who created the Parthenon and theatrical tragedy…
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The Origins Of Western Warfare: Militarism And Morality In The Ancient World (1996) by Doyne Dawson
The twentieth century was the bloodiest in history. Given how bloody other centuries have been, that is really saying something. Why is western civilization, so remarkably progressive in so many ways, so obstinately aggressive and warlike? In “The Origins of Western Warfare: Militarism and Morality in the Ancient World,” historian Doyne Dawson argues that the…
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The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991) by Gordon Wood
Other historians, such as Arthur Schlesinger, have argued that the revolution had its impetus in the preservation of society, not its transformation, which is what usually defines “revolutions.” Wood claims that this assertion is misguided and limited. He concedes that the American Revolution was unique among national revolutions, but that doesn’t make it any less…
What's Tim Reading Now? 