by Thucydides
Recommended by 5 notable people, including Ryan Holiday and Matt Mullenweg
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See customer reviews on Amazon →Recommended by 8 sources and appears in Books Recommended by Ryan Holiday, Most Recommended Books, and History.
Written four hundred years before the birth of Christ, this detailed contemporary account of the long lifeanddeath struggle between Athens and Sparta stands an excellent chance of fulfilling its author's ambitious claim. Thucydides himself (c.460400 BC) was an Athenian and achieved the rank of general in the earlier stages of the war. He applied...
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Why recommended
Recommended by 8 sources and appears in Books Recommended by Ryan Holiday, Most Recommended Books, and History.
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
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Consider War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Recommended by 12 sources.
“This is a vast, character-centered historical novel that moves between drawing-room conversations, battlefield narration and extended reflections on history and free will. You’ll spend long stretches inside the heads of several aristocratic families while the nation slides toward and through war; the reward is sharp psychological observation and richly textured social detail. The main limitation is scale: scenes repeat themes at length and Tolstoy stops to argue about historical causation, which breaks narrative momentum for readers who want a tighter plot.”
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.