TIDES OF WAR

Handsome, capable, and ambitious, Alcibiades, friend and disciple of Socrates, was the cream of Athenian youth in the fifth century B.C. He played a decisive role in the Peloponnesian War, turned traitor, and was, at last, murdered. Socrates was put to death in no small part because of his association with the man, whose life he once saved in battle. Thus, according to our author, is the irony of Alcibiades’s assassin and his teacher awaiting death in the same jail at the same time. Out of this history, Steven Pressfield (Gates of Fire) has woven a complex, thoroughly researched, and superbly composed novel of political scheming and the consequences of war. All is grist for George Guidall’s oral mill. He, too, is steeped in the lore of classical antiquity. He loves to dash out the impossible-to-pronounce names and places of the Mediterranean and to sink his teeth into the well-drawn characters, making them approachable but not anachronistic. Marvelous achievements for both writer and narrator. Y.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 01]