The Anatomy of Error: Ancient Military Disasters and Their Lessons for Modern Strategists

Presents the flawed strategies of eight military leaders including Mark Antony, Hannibal, and Jugurtha

History

Ober, Josiah

Strauss, Barry S.

Military

St Martins Pr

Presents the flawed strategies of eight military leaders including Mark Antony, Hannibal, and Jugurtha

Innovative and engaging, The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C. explores the intellectual dynamics of democracy by recreating the historical context that shaped its evolution. Part of the “Reacting to the Past” series, this text consists of elaborate games in which students are assigned roles, informed by classic texts, set in particular moments of intellectual and social ferment. Issues of the time are sorted out by a polity fractured into radical and moderate democrats, oligarchs, and Socratics, among others.

Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C. (Reacting to the Past)

Carnes, Mark C.

Ancient Civilizations

Pearson College Div

Part of the Reacting to the Past series, The Threshold of Democracy re-creates the intellectual dynamics of one of the most formative periods in the human experience. After nearly three decades of war, Sparta crushed democratic Athens, destroyed its great walls and warships, occupied the city, and installed a brutal regime, “the Thirty Tyrants.” The excesses of the tyrants resulted in civil war, and, as the game begins, they have been expelled and the democracy restored. But doubts about democracy remain, expressed most ingeniously by Socrates and his young supporters. Will Athens retain a political system where all decisions are made by an Assembly of six thousand or so citizens? Will leaders continue to be chosen by random lottery? Will citizenship be broadened to include slaves who fought for the democracy and foreign-born metics who paid taxes in its support? Will Athens rebuild its long walls and warships and again extract tribute from city-states throughout the eastern Mediterranean? These and other issues are sorted out by a polity fractured into radical and moderate democrats, oligarchs, and Socratics, among others. The debates are informed by Plato’s Republic, as well as excerpts from Thucydides, Xenophon, and other contemporary sources. By examining democracy at its threshold, the game provides the perspective to consider its subsequent evolution. Reacting to the Past is a series of historical role-playing games that explore important ideas by re-creating the contexts that shaped them. Students are assigned roles, informed by classic texts, set in particular moments of intellectual and social ferment. An award-winning active-learning pedagogy, Reacting to the Past improves speaking, writing, and leadership skills, promotes engagement with classic texts and history, and builds learning communities. Reacting can be used across the curriculum, from the first-year general education class to “capstone” experiences. A Reacting game can also function as the discussion component of lecture classes, or it can be enlisted for intersession courses, honors programs, and other specialized curricular purposes.

The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C. (Reacting to the Past)

W.W.Norton&Company

A Norton original in the Reacting to the Past series, The Threshold of Democracy re-creates the intellectual dynamics of one of the most formative periods in western history. In this Reacting to the Past game, the classroom is transformed into Athens in 403 BCE In the wake of Athenian military defeat and rebellion, advocates of democracy have reopened the Assembly, but stability remains elusive. As members of the Assembly, players must contend with divisive issues like citizenship, elections, re-militarization, and dissent. Foremost among the troublemakers: Socrates. Reacting to the Past is an award-winning series of immersive role-playing games that actively engage students in their own learning. Students assume the roles of historical characters and practice critical thinking, primary source analysis, and argument, both written and spoken. For more information about the series, visit wwnorton.com/reacting.

The Threshold Of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C. (Reacting to the Past)

Norman, Naomi J.

This book presents a state-of-the-art debate about the origins of Athenian democracy by five eminent scholars. The result is a stimulating, critical exploration and interpretation of the extant evidence on this intriguing and important topic. The authors address such questions as: Why was democracy first realized in ancient Greece? Was democracy "invented" or did it evolve over a long period of time? What were the conditions for democracy, the social and political foundations that made this development possible? And what factors turned the possibility of democracy into necessity and reality? The authors first examine the conditions in early Greek society that encouraged equality and "people's power." They then scrutinize, in their social and political contexts, three crucial points in the evolution of democracy: the reforms connected with the names of Solon, Cleisthenes, and Ephialtes in the early and late sixth and mid-fifth century. Finally, an ancient historian and a political scientist review the arguments presented in the previous chapters and add their own perspectives, asking what lessons we can draw today from the ancient democratic experience. Designed for a general readership as well as students and scholars, the book intends to provoke discussion by presenting side by side the evidence and arguments that support various explanations of the origins of democracy, thus enabling readers to join in the debate and draw their own conclusions.

Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece

Wallace,Robert

Raaflaub, Kurt A.

University of California Press

This book presents a state-of-the-art debate about the origins of Athenian democracy by five eminent scholars. The result is a stimulating, critical exploration and interpretation of the extant evidence on this intriguing and important topic. The authors address such questions as: Why was democracy first realized in ancient Greece? Was democracy “invented” or did it evolve over a long period of time? What were the conditions for democracy, the social and political foundations that made this development possible? And what factors turned the possibility of democracy into necessity and reality? The authors first examine the conditions in early Greek society that encouraged equality and “people’s power.” They then scrutinize, in their social and political contexts, three crucial points in the evolution of democracy: the reforms connected with the names of Solon, Cleisthenes, and Ephialtes in the early and late sixth and mid-fifth century. Finally, an ancient historian and a political scientist review the arguments presented in the previous chapters and add their own perspectives, asking what lessons we can draw today from the ancient democratic experience. Designed for a general readership as well as students and scholars, the book intends to provoke discussion by presenting side by side the evidence and arguments that support various explanations of the origins of democracy, thus enabling readers to join in the debate and draw their own conclusions.

Cartledge, Paul.

Raaflaub, Kurt A. A.

Tracing practical reason from its origins to its modern and contemporary permutations\nThe Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled performance of strategic thinking in public and private affairs, was an intellectual breakthrough that remains both a feature of and a bug in our modern world. Countering arguments that rational choice-making is a contingent product of modernity, The Greeks and the Rational traces the long history of theorizing rationality back to ancient Greece.\nIn this book, Josiah Ober explores how ancient Greek sophists, historians, and philosophers developed sophisticated and systematic ideas about practical reason. At the same time, they recognized its limits—that not every decision can be reduced to mechanistic calculations of optimal outcomes. Ober finds contemporary echoes of this tradition in the application of game theory to political science, economics, and business management. The Greeks and the Rational offers a striking revisionist history with widespread implications for the study of ancient Greek civilization, the history of thought, and human rationality itself.\nFrom the Back Cover\n“With tremendous generosity and vision, The Greeks and the Rational reaches out to game theory and serves as a model of scholarship that allows us to recognize each other, across disciplines and centuries. Once in a while we need a book like this to remind us how our urge to understand and theorize society is a deep and fundamental one shared across time.”—Michael Chwe, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles\n"Subtle and compelling in its argumentation, astonishing in its range, and ambitious in its aims, The Greeks and the Rational will be essential reading for Greek intellectual historians, students of ancient philosophy, and modern political theorists alike."—Emily Mackil, Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley\n"A rigorous, passionate book. Ober uses game theory to produce powerful new readings of major authors such as Plato and Herodotus. The payoff is inspiring for classicists, social scientists, and citizens who want to make just societies out of self-interested decision-makers."—John Ma, Professor of Classics, Columbia University\n"With grace, depth, and sophistication, Ober offers profound and sophisticated insight into the enduring philosophical question of the relationship between instrumental rationality and eudaimonia, or the flourishing of all."—Margaret Levi, Sara Miller McCune Director of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University

The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason (Volume 76) (Sather Classical Lectures)

Business & Money

Economics

How and why did the Western tradition of political theorizing arise in Athens during the late fifth and fourth centuries B.C.? By interweaving intellectual history with political philosophy and literary analysis, Josiah Ober argues that the tradition originated in a high-stakes debate about democracy. Since elite Greek intellectuals tended to assume that ordinary men were incapable of ruling themselves, the longevity and resilience of Athenian popular rule presented a problem: how to explain the apparent success of a regime "irrationally" based on the inherent wisdom and practical efficacy of decisions made by non-elite citizens? The problem became acute after two oligarchic coups d' tat in the late fifth century B.C. The generosity and statesmanship that democrats showed after regaining political power contrasted starkly with the oligarchs' violence and corruption. Since it was no longer self-evident that "better men" meant "better government," critics of democracy sought new arguments to explain the relationship among politics, ethics, and morality.
 Ober offers fresh readings of the political works of Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle, among others, by placing them in the context of a competitive community of dissident writers. These thinkers struggled against both democratic ideology and intellectual rivals to articulate the best and most influential criticism of popular rule. The competitive Athenian environment stimulated a century of brilliant literary and conceptual innovation. Through Ober's re-creation of an ancient intellectual milieu, early Western political thought emerges not just as a "footnote to Plato," but as a dissident commentary on the first Western democracy.

Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Princeton University Press

Where did "democracy" come from, and what was its original form and meaning? Here Josiah Ober shows that this "power of the people" crystallized in a revolutionary uprising by the ordinary citizens of Athens in 508-507 B.C. He then examines the consequences of the development of direct democracy for upper-and lower-class citizens, for dissident Athenian intellectuals, and for those who were denied citizenship under the new regime (women, slaves, resident foreigners), as well as for the general development of Greek history.
 When the citizens suddenly took power into their own hands, they changed the cultural and social landscape of Greece, thereby helping to inaugurate the Classical Era. Democracy led to fundamental adjustments in the basic structures of Athenian society, altered the forms and direction of political thinking, and sparked a series of dramatic reorientations in international relations. It quickly made Athens into the most powerful Greek city-state, but it also fatally undermined the traditional Greek rules of warfare. It stimulated the development of the Western tradition of political theorizing and encouraged a new conception of justice that has striking parallels to contemporary theories of rights. But Athenians never embraced the notions of inherency and inalienability that have placed the concept of rights at the center of modern political thought. Thus the play of power that constituted life in democratic Athens is revealed as at once strangely familiar and desperately foreign, and the values sustaining the Athenian political community as simultaneously admirable and terrifying.

The Athenian Revolution

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ober, Josiah. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ober, Josiah

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ober, Josiah. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Anatomy of Error: Ancient Military Disasters and Their Lessons for Modern Strategists

The Anatomy of Error: Ancient Military Disasters and Their Lessons for Modern Strategists

Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C. (Reacting to the Past)

The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C. (Reacting to the Past)

The Threshold Of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C. (Reacting to the Past)

Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece

Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece

The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason (Volume 76) (Sather Classical Lectures)

Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule.

The Athenian Revolution