Thucydides: The Reinvention of History
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Thucydides: The Reinvention of History Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Donald Kagan (Author), Paul Hecht (Narrator), Recorded Books (Publisher)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 39 ratings
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A reconsideration of the first modern historian and his methods from a renowned scholar

The grandeur and power of Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War have enthralled readers, historians, and statesmen alike for two and a half millennia, and the work and its author have had an enduring influence on those who think about international relations and war, especially in our own time. In Thucydides, Donald Kagan, one of our foremost classics scholars, illuminates the great historian and his work both by examining him in the context of his time and by considering him as a revisionist historian.

Thucydides took a spectacular leap into modernity by refusing to seek explanations for human behavior in the will of the gods, or even in the will of individuals, looking instead at the behavior of men in society. In this context, Kagan explains how The Peloponnesian War differs significantly from other accounts offered by Thucydides' contemporaries and stands as the first modern work of political history, dramatically influencing the manner in which history has been conceptualized ever since.
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  1. Listening Length
    9 hours and 35 minutes
  2. Author
    Donald Kagan
  3. Narrator
    Paul Hecht
  4. Audible release date
    March 15, 2010
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Recorded Books
  7. ASIN
    B003CN7E06
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 9 hours and 35 minutes
Author Donald Kagan
Narrator Paul Hecht
Audible.com Release Date March 15, 2010
Publisher Recorded Books
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B003CN7E06
Best Sellers Rank #212,262 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#56 in Historiography (Audible Books & Originals)
#149 in Ancient & Classical Greek History
#161 in Greek History

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
39 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

F. B. Jeffery
5.0 out of 5 stars The tragedy of Athens and the Greek world
Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2021
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I found the author's explanation of Thucydides a revelation. It took me beyond the "founder of Western history" to a much better understanding of Thucydides as a person and as a historian. In particular, the author's description of the disaster at Siracusa resonated with my questions about the foundations of current (and not-so-current) American foreign policy.
4 people found this helpful
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W. Tappan Lum
5.0 out of 5 stars a fascinating review of the books of Thucydides
Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2012
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This book is a detailed review of a 5th century BC historian ( according to many the first real historian) by a distinguished 20th century historian. Kagan's views of the natative are very inciteful. A must book for any interested in this period of history.
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Otto Noordraven
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2017
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Good book
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Larry Van bibber
4.0 out of 5 stars Very enjoyable biography
Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2014
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Thucydides is an amazing historian and Kagan did a great of providing a concise account of him and the Peloponnesian war. I have read Kagan's book on the war which I thoroughly enjoyed but I have not read the book "The Landmark Thucydides" That will take some time.
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Bruce Trinque
5.0 out of 5 stars The History of the Great Historian
Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2009
Undoubtedly Thucydides ranks among the greatest of historians. Indeed, he probably deserves to be recognized as the founder of modern history ("modern" in this case meaning a wide-ranging, fundamentally objective analysis of events). His great work on the Peloponnesian War is unmatched in its long-reaching influence. Thucydides' depiction of the great 5th century BC war between Athens and Sparta has for more than two millenia formed the basis for viewing and understanding those events. Very likely no single other work of history has ever had such an impact in forming future perception of events. In "Thucydides: The Reinvention of History", Donald Kagan -- the pre-emininent modern historian of the Peloponnesian War -- examines Thucydides' work in light of Thucydides' own claims of cool objectivity; Kagan ably demonstrates, I believe, that inevitably the ancient Greek historian did not in fact, could not indeed, wholly maintain his objectivity, certainly understandable in the Thucydides himself was a direct participant in some of the events he described. In several cases, notably Pericles' involvement in the origin of the Peloponnesian War and the doomed Athenia expedition to Sicily, Kagan presents a strong case that Thucydides has deliberately crafted an interpretation of events that ran counter to popular perceptions and, in fact, runs counter even to the evidence that Thucydides presented in his own book.

Kagan's "Thucydides" might be viewed as a companion, with differences of emphasis, to his earlier single-volume history of the Peloponnesian War. Although much of the same ground is covered in both books, the focus is different, with the ancient historian much more in the forefront of this new volume.
42 people found this helpful
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D.Z. Hays
3.0 out of 5 stars The First Revisionist Historian
Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2011
Any discussion of Thucydides almost always begins with a juxtaposition of the Athenian with the Halicarnassian, Herodotus. Herodotus, who wrote before Thucydides, filled his history of the Persian Wars with colorful discussions of exotic cultures, far away kings, distant geography, and, most notoriously, mythology. Thucydides, on the other hand, wrote with a clear and rational hand; his history of the Peloponnesian War is prized for its sharp analysis, an analysis that was unknown up until Thucydides and extremely rare thereafter. Herodotus, we now know, wrote to entertain the listener or reader; Thucydides wrote to get to the truth. Indeed, the Athenian prefaced his History with a direct shot against Herodotus: "To hear this history rehearsed, for that there be inserted in it no fables, shall be perhaps not delightful." In his own words, then, Thucydides wrote to depict objective. Later writers would share his attitude: Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote that Thucydides "reports the facts without judging them," while Nietzsche noted that the Athenian was "the grand summation, the last manifestation of that strong, stern, hard matter-of-factness instinctive to the older Hellenes."

Donald Kagan, the world's foremost scholar of the Peloponnesian Wars, in his career-long interest of Thucydides and the Wars, has discovered that the belief in Thucydides' complete objectivity is mistaken. We must realize, says Kagan, that Thucydides was a contemporary of the topic about which he wrote; moreover, his history of the period differs from the interpretations of his contemporaries. Thus, either his contemporaries' interpretations of events were mistaken and Thucydides' is the truth, or (as Kagan argues in this book) Thucydides wrote to argue against his contemporaries and to put forth a different interpretation of the events of the Peloponnesian Wars. The latter is quite similar to the former, and therefore Kagan's goal in "The Reinvention of History" is to show where Thucydides differs from the contemporary vision of events and also to show where his version of history is further from the truth than what he claims. Thucydides, we learn, was less than objective, and, to use a dirty word, had an "agenda". What his agenda was is somewhat mysterious, and I do not think Kagan did a good job at addressing this issue: perhaps Thucydides was sour over his loss of Amphipolis and subsequent exile; or perhaps he hated democracy.

For example, many of Thucydides' contemporaries believed that the Peloponnesian War was a direct result of Pericles' militancy, while Thucydides himself believed that the growth of the Athenian empire played a huge role in a long series of inevitabilities that led to the war. Exactly why Thucydides chose to blame the war on Athens' empire remains a mystery, as Kagan does not address this. Thucydides would also say that under Pericles, Athens was not a democracy, but "in fact a government ruled by its foremost citizen," i.e. Pericles. However, a detailed examination of the workings of Athenian government at this time reveals that Pericles did not "rule" over Athens indefinitely, but was restrained by many checks and balances. Here again, says Kagan, Thucydides puts a spin on things, and the Athenian would later go on to extoll Pericles and aristocratic leadership at the expense of what he perceived to be a mobocracy that was ever too ready to change course on the slightest whim.

Perhaps, then, Thucydides was a blue blooded defender of the aristocracy, who couldn't help but see Athens' defeat against Sparta as a result of the perils of democracy, but Kagan never goes this far to say so. Another warning to the prospective reader: this book is dreadfully boring, and one reviewer on this page has noted that much of the book is copied from Kagan's own history of the Peloponnesian Wars. The result---this book--- is a history of the Peloponnesian Wars with a few paragraphs about Thucydides thrown in here and there, pointing out where the Athenian's account of history differs from that of his contemporaries'. The most valuable thing to take away from this book---and it is indeed valuable---is the notion that Thucydides, while still a great historian, is not the bastion of objectivity that many today idolize him to be. He was, in Kagan's words, the first revisionist historian.
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Top reviews from other countries

Will Staffs
5.0 out of 5 stars A219 / A275 Open University
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 26, 2013
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If you are reading either or both of the above courses this makes an excellent companion. It gives additional context that cannot be covered in the course collateral - beautifully written and a superb accessory to any serious student or enthusiast.
4 people found this helpful
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Dimitrios Siountris
5.0 out of 5 stars The true father of history
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 28, 2013
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Kagan's well-written account of Thucydides reaffirms why he is rightly seen as the father of history. Kagan explains how Thucydides gathered his information, how he cross-checked his facts, and how he tried to maintain objectivity, as any modern historian would.
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S. Smith
3.0 out of 5 stars A Defence of Political History
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 3, 2018
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I have read and re-read Donald Kagan’s four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War and, to most who have read that outstanding work, his book on Thucydides will be disappointing. For someone who has not read either that full history of the war or its one-volume condensed version, it is a concise summary of Kagan’s view on the standing of Thucydides as a historian and a critique of his methods. However, large sections of the text are lifted straight from his earlier works with, at most, minor corrections. The Introduction and the Conclusion, apart from being repeats of earlier works and other concerns, have as much to do with Kagan’s own political views as with Thucydides.

On a positive note, the nine chapters forming the body of the book set out Kagan’s view that Thucydides was a revisionist who tried to contradict views about the war held by many of his contemporaries. Although Thucydides claimed to be impartial, Kagan shows he was sometimes deliberately misleading in his presentation and that those generally-held views were more likely to be correct than Thucydides’ revisions. These include his attempting to minimise the responsibility of Pericles for starting the Peloponnesian War and proposing a strategy that had to succeed quickly or bankrupt Athens, ignoring the successes of later leaders who abandoned Pericles’ strategy or attributing them as mere chance and minimising the responsibility of Nicias, whose policies followed those of Pericles, for the disaster in Sicily. However, although Kagan provides some background information, these issues were probably better considered in the context of a narrative of the events they relate to, as they were in Kagan’s history of the war, rather than in isolation.

On the other hand, the volumes of Kagan’s history of the war were published up to 40 years ago, long before the contributions of more recent researchers. The passages recycled from his earlier works are not modified on account of later interpretations, so the whole does not present a coherent and considered final opinion. The period from the late 1960s to the 2000s was also that when Kagan began to express his defence of history as a search for the truth through detailed and objective research, not just to explain events, but also to provide examples, give warnings and indicate likely developments in human affairs by reference to the past: the approach first adopted by Thucydides. Just as Kagan shows that Thucydides had an agenda, Kagan’s agenda is a plea for politics, wars and diplomacy to be studied as the central themes of history rather than just trivial and short-term compared to the society, economy and geography of the peoples and places studied.

Kagan regrets that social and economic history is replacing political history as the proper object for the study of history. His history of the Peloponnesian War is an outstanding contribution to the form of historical enquiry on which he has spent his career. This cut-and-paste consideration of Thucydides is, however, hardly the best support for his advocacy of political history.
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S. Papanastasiou
4.0 out of 5 stars Good read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 17, 2013
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Not as good as Kagan's superlative The Peloponnesian War book but only because of the subject matter; wars are, for most I suspect, inherently more exciting than arguing historical fact.

The twist here is that Kagan does what Thucydides did to his predecessors; he argues convincingly against the ancient historian's interpretation of the Peloponnesian War, thereby "re-inventing history". Donald Kagan's writing style is both elegant and concise as one who has read The Peloponnesian War might expect. However, if you have not read that then get it, read it and then come back and get this one.
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diamanti lucio
3.0 out of 5 stars Because is smaller more easy to hand
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 16, 2016
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It is a revised edition in some part with the same words and figures of the book "The pelloponesian war". Practically a book focusing only some aspect of the war. Because is smaller more easy to hand!!
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