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Summary: democratic leadership
Review: An great book for understanding about leadership in ancient Athens. Since Pericles was elected to the position of general once a year he was required to walk a political tightrope. This book will give you a good feel for the difficulties of yearly elections. You will not get great detail for the life of Pericle beyond Plutarch. Fans of leadership, democracy, warfare and international relations this book is a must!
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Summary: Kagan Breathes Life into the Soul of Pericles of Athens
Review: Donald Kagan is one of the foremost historians on the Greece during the time of Pericles. This book is a skillful demonstration of his command of the history and historical texts combined with the story-telling aspect that makes history three dimensional. Pericles is a brilliant character in the history of the world, and Kagan is able to convey every aspect of his brilliance. A wonderful book for both the history buff and the simply curious
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Summary: Best Work on Athens' Golden Age
Review: Donald Kagan offers here a well-written popular account of the birth of democracy in ancient Greece. This book represents the capstone to a lifetime of research, reflection, writing (just check Amazon's list of his books; Kagan is perhaps the top writer in English on the Peloponnesian War), and teaching on classical Greece and illustrates both Kagan's eloquence and his belief that we can learn from the successes and failures of democracy in Ancient Athens. His Pericles is a hero but a tragic hero; his attempt to educate the entire population of Athens to achieve excellence reached an impressive level of success, but his relentlessly rational moderation refused to take into account emotional reactions of both individuals and states abroad and at home and helped bring on an unnecessary and disastrous war. His portrait of Periclean Athens offers many valuable analogies with contemporary democracy - and many warnings for us as well. Along with W.G. Forrest's The Emergence of Greek Democracy, sadly out of print, this is the best account of Greek History for the general reader, for its substance is intriguing, and it is a "great read."
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Summary: A Necessary Adjunct to the Peloponnesian War Series
Review: In reading Kagan's epochal Peloponnesian War series (if Amazon had a six-star rating that series would deserve it) one is struck by the relative paucity of material present on one of the central characters of that period, Perikles of Athens. While Kagan gives his usual detailed treatment of events, what led up to many of Perikles' attitudes and intellectual precepts is left untreated. A reader lucky enough to possess this volume will find the time spent in reading it in parallel with the four-volume magnum opus to be well spent. It supplies a view of the great man and his city with a color and richness that truly makes the reader's cup overflow, and might, if treated in this detail in the larger series, have slowed the latter's breakneck pace to a crawl. It is, of course, wonderful as a standalone reference. Readers unfamiliar with Professor Kagan are missing a real treat. His prose is lean and concise, and its vividness lights the sometimes bland subject material of ancient Greek history with clarity and a contemporary relevance that is always illuminating and occasionally breathtaking. This is not "pop" history, but it is so well-written that it achieves the latter's accessibility without its superfluity. If more ancient history were written this way it would a much more popular subject of study.
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Summary: A worthy book
Review: This is a good biography of a great man. Kagan not only distills a great deal of information into a very accessable book, he also manages to impart understanding and insight about Pericles and his Athens. This book is valuable to anyone interested in classical Greece. With particular emphasis - anyone contemplating an attack on "The Peloponnesian War" by Thucydides would do well to get "Pericles" as a companion. Even if you already have Thucydides under your belt, you will probably gain fresh insight into that famously difficult work through Kagan's lucid exposition.
Rating:
Summary: A worthy book
Review: This is a good biography of a great man. Kagan not only distills a great deal of information into a very accessable book, he also manages to impart understanding and insight about Pericles and his Athens. This book is valuable to anyone interested in classical Greece. With particular emphasis - anyone contemplating an attack on "The Peloponnesian War" by Thucydides would do well to get "Pericles" as a companion. Even if you already have Thucydides under your belt, you will probably gain fresh insight into that famously difficult work through Kagan's lucid exposition.
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Summary: The Churchill of the Ancient World
Review: When I was just a youngster I remembered reading about the "Golden Age of Pericles". What was this "golden age"? Who was Pericles? What impact did he have on the world today?
To begin with, the "golden age" marked the beginnings of the Athenian Empire. Athens became the Mecca for the world, attracting the greatest minds. It became an important trade center. With this, Athens became one of the greatest cities in the mid-Fifth Century BC world. At the center was Pericles.
Pericles rose to prominence under less than favorable circumstances. He came from an old family that was involved in a sacrilege to the gods about one hundred years earlier. His family was cursed and expelled from Athens. When Pericles came of age he neglected politics, as the Athenian aristocracy was firmly entrenched. When his opportunity finally came Pericles was able to win over the citizens to his way of thinking by the power of his oratory.
Pericles didn?t invent democracy but under his leadership democracy flourished. He firmly believed that when the opportunity for power belonged to all the citizens, instead of only a few, that the best people would rise to leadership roles. This was democracy?s strength. The critics?and there were many?feared mob rule. For that reason it would be a long time before democracy rose to prominence in the world again. Even our own founding fathers feared mob rule, but representative democracy would prevent that while preserving democracy?s strength.
The legacy of Pericles was that he was a true statesman. He understood the ramifications of the peace with Sparta and what would happen to Athens if she caved into the demands of Sparta. The result was a great Peloponnesian war that would eventually cost Athens her empire. It was faulty strategy, wrong assumptions, and a lack of strong leadership after Pericles died that did Athens in. Donald Kagan mentions the connection with Winston Churchill, who found his country facing a great danger from Germany because its prime minister backed down. Like Pericles, he knew Great Britain would have to stand and fight. One can only wonder what the world would be like if Pericles? Athens had won as Churchill?s Britain had?
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