The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta

The Persian Challenge

De: Paul A. Rahe

Narrado por: Bronson Pinchot

More than 2,500 years ago, a confederation of small Greek city-states defeated the invading armies of Persia, the most powerful empire in the world. In this meticulously researched study, historian Paul Rahe argues that Sparta was responsible for the initial establishment of the Hellenic defensive coalition and was, in fact, the most essential player in its ultimate victory.

Drawing from an impressive range of ancient sources, including Herodotus and Plutarch, the author veers from the traditional Athenocentric view of the Greco-Persian Wars to examine from a Spartan perspective the grand strategy that halted the Persian juggernaut. Rahe provides a fascinating, detailed picture of life in Sparta circa 480 BC, revealing how the Spartans' form of government and the regimen to which they subjected themselves instilled within them the pride, confidence, discipline, and discernment necessary to forge an alliance that would stand firm against a great empire, driven by religious fervor, that held sway over two-fifths of the human race.

©2015 Paul A. Rahe (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

The content of the actual history is outstanding

The content of the book is outstanding. The quality of the narration is distinctively poor, but it is more than made up for by the quality of the text.

Let me compare this, for example, with Vandiver's lectures on Herodotus from the great courses. Vandiver's presentation is scholarly and careful. She is an experienced teacher and may havebeen teaching that course for years. I trust her judgment on everything she says. Because the recording is a recorded lecture, their narration is a perfect presentation of the authors meaning.

While I did learn a lot from Vandiver's presentation, I didn't look forward to listening to it. Rahe is more fun. For example, his presentation of Darius was fascinating and absolutely changed my perspective on that time in history. It made me want to learn so much more about early Persia, it's religion, and it's rulers.

Rahe certainly has opinions, but the detail that he provides to support them is very impressive compared to other texts I've read.

He does a good job of cutting through the ancient propaganda and showing you the realpolitik underneath. It is as if Thucydides had rewritten Herodotus using all of modern academic research.

Yes, the editing is very frustrating. I suspect that they they didn't want the pronunciation to be wrong, so the reader paused before and after challenging words in order to make it easier to edit in corrected pronunciation after getting feedback from a scholarly consultant. Yes, it is definitely distracting. Yes, you can learn to ignore it and just enjoy the book. (Or at least I could) The audience for a book of this step is small enough that we can't expect perfect editing. If we criticize publishers for imperfect products, then perhaps we won't have specialized audiobooks like this at all.

With that said, another approach would simply be to buy the book from Google Play. I buy many books from there, and their default text-to-speech narration is much better than the narration here. Amazon turns their text-to-speech narration off on their Kindle books, but Google generally doesn't. Bottom line: if so inclined, consider getting the e-book from Google Play. The narration will be much better. Just confirm that "Read Aloud" is enabled in the Play store.

Not about Spartan Strategy just GrecoPersian war

Title totally misleading. Author did great job researching and writing history of strategy and tactics of Persia and Greeks in Greco Persian war. Both n land and sea. Learned some new things. Well documented. Good reader. But NOT in any way about Grand Strategy of Sparta unless you count that Sparta’s strategy of state was to keep helots and its vassals from rebelling by keeping Spartan army at home and out of foreign affairs

Required reading for a commander or an analyst

This book tells the story of how the world really is ruled and how it really works.

A little known academic gem that helps to get your strategic calculus started.

Too Academic ?

For non academicians like me, this was difficult to follow. Unfamiliarity with ancient names was a huge hurdle; also, why were not dates designated as B.C.??

Very thorough and excellent structure

For over three years, I’ve gone to bed listening to Dan Carlin’s King of Kings.

This book largely overlaps with the meat of that podcast, but it is so much more thorough and you get so many important details and justifications for why to favor one take on partially veiled history over another.

My only complaint is because I naturally want to contrast the two, this really highlights how podcasts are made to be listened to but books are made to be read and audiobooks just aren’t as good for comprehension as reading or podcasts. That being said, the narration is better than adequate. I just wish he would commit more to the pronunciations. He reads almost every non Greek proper name in this halting way that can get really annoying when there’re a lot of them in a short time.

not what I was expecting

at the beginning of the book the author does a good job of describing Spartan culture and different classes of people but the rest of the book I feel is less Spartan and more Greek and Persian conflict as opposed to what the title of the book says it is.

Narrator not so good

The sound quality isn't the worst I've heard but could be better. More importantly though, the narrator needs to work on his punctuation and tone of voice.

I hate war, but I love this book

War has always disgusted me, and strategy has always bored me.
But the ancient Mediterranean fascinates me, I was running out of audible selections, and this one was free.

Pleasant surprise : I love it. It deepens and broadens -- in fascinating ways -- my understanding of the cultures involved.

I've already pursued this interest through multiple Audible (and paper) books, by Robert Garland, Kenneth Harl (both excellent) and others. Each scholarly voice adds detail and nuance of interpretation, and variation of opinion.

Other readers have found the narrator a problem; me too. But the content is so engaging that I soon found myself ignoring the narrator's stumbles. (And he is far from the worst non-author narrator I have heard on Audible.) It is always better when an author narrates his own work.

Two insignificant criticisms (actually suggestions/requests) : I would have liked the chapter headings to be more descriptive than 1, 2, 3, etc., and I would have loved a downloadable pdf, because I often like to revisit specific information and see how a word or name looks in print. (These are features I enjoy in Great Courses selections)

I look forward eagerly to Mr Rahe's 2 follow-up audible titles, narrated by the author himself. One is already in my library, and the other will be soon.

Interesting History of the Persian Conflict

The title said this audiobook was about Spartan strategy, but it was predominately about the Persians and Athenians.

Battles matter.

Battles matter. An impressive deep dive into the Greco-Persian wars focused on the Spartan centrality to the Greek defensive effort.

While Rahe notes that more modern historians like to focus on the non-military areas as being the source of major epochal changes, Rahe's basic premise remains that battles matter. So get ready for a lot of battles.

I can't say this was an easy book. It's not. It's geared more towards the academic than casual reader but there's still great value for anyone with a passing interest in classical greek warfighitng or concepts of how disparate city states could manage to defend against and ultimately defeat an empire as massive as the Persians.

Rahe highlights how the singular dedication of the Spartans to militarism was of premier importance to the development of a coherent anti-Persian strategy. There is the obvious irony in a repressive police state like Sparta being the lynchpin in defending Western democratic ideals and Rahe doesn't shy away from commenting on their annual wars against their Helot slaves and other unsavory practices. Rahe doesn't get as moralistic as Victor Davis Hanson, but that's ok as that's not the focus.

Overall, this is a thorough, if occasionally impenetrable, look into classical military strategy.