A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War

by Victor Davis Hanson

age. A central theme is the use and abuse of power, and how it lurks behind men’s professions of idealism and purported ideology.

“What Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude.”

“Athenianism” was the Western world’s first example of globalization.

That the olive is an evergreen tree in a hot climate; that it possesses enormous powers of regeneration; that it can grow almost anywhere without constant attention or great amounts of water and fertilizer; that it reaches great age; that its fruits provide everything from fuel to cooking oil to food—all that combines to surround the tree with a nearly religious awe to match its undeniable utility, both now and in the past.