Summary Of A War Like No Other By Victor Davis Hanson

Loss of Intellectual Wealth Costs More than Life

In his book “A War Like No Other” Victor Davis Hanson affirms that the truly devastating loss caused by the Peloponnesian war was not simply the loss of human life or economic collapse. The truly devastating loss was the halt of intellectual advancement and artistic achievement of a beautiful and richly cultured civilization. Hanson writes, “the cost was more in terms of the material surfeit and the intellectual energy of Greece that were depleted” (298). In this book, Hanson is not attempting to simply recount the events of the Peloponnesian war for the hundredth time. He wishes to display the humanity of the gruesome and long war, and show the real the war’s true cost was of intellectual wealth and advancement. In the book Hanson presents that the Peloponnesian war was started and so savagely pursued by Sparta and her allies due to their fear of Athens’ military strength and idealism. This fear caused the cataclysmic collapse

However, he claims he is only going to give a brief synopsis of the events of the war and that information makes up the majority of the book. Hanson spends very little time addressing true purpose for writing the book. Even though I agree with the man I believe he should have spent more time addressing this loss off intellectual and artistic wealth and its effect on the world as a whole. Hanson should have kept to his word and strayed away from the account of the war event by event and stick to his idea. I believe he is right that the true cost of the war was in fact the loss of intellectual advancement. The loss of human life is of course disheartening but imagine the civilization and artistic achievement the Greeks could have created in the absence of war. The magnificence of that civilization is almost unimaginable because this world has never remained untouched by