Will I love The Plague of War?

If, like me, when you read a history book, you want to learn something new both about a crucial period or personage in history and about how they reflect more generally on the human condition, then look no further than Jennifer T. Roberts’ magisterial study of the ancient Greek world between the Persian Wars and the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War (490-360 BCE).

It thrilled me and informed me alike from its first page to the last. At the start of her chosen timeframe, the Greek world was at risk of being overwhelmed by the Persian Empire. Had the Persians… show more.

Roberts’ groundbreaking, game-changing story of the Peloponnesian War (really, wars) is richly detailed and comprehensive, a modernizing “leveling up” from Donald Kagan’s 2004 standard text. By centering her narrative in the impact of the war, rather than strategy and politics, Roberts brings home the terrible human cost of the conflict, and the book serves as a critical examination of what wholesale violence means to a society, from the high to the low. Roberts writes with incredible empathy, and her voice makes the book more than enlightening, it’s a deeply moving mediation on the depths of self-inflicted suffering as only human… show more.