A University of Rochester emeritus professor of history, Perez Zagorin, has written a book on Thucydides titled Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader.

Here’s a review, the author of which, James P. Holoka of Eastern Michigan University, says the book will “be most useful to an audience of undergraduates and other ‘intellectually curious people,'” and that Zagorin

is to be congratulated for his well-informed, evenhanded, readable, and eupeptic presentation of a formidable ancient historian.

“Eupeptic.” I had to look that one up to be sure. It means “having good digestion; cheerful, optimistic.”

Peter Stothard reviewed the same book last month for the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), writing

“Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader” is a useful book. Yet as Mr. Zagorin himself recognizes, a great historian claimed by so many generals and politicians in so many struggles over so many years cannot always be understood through the minds of others. Mr. Zagorin calls for his own readers to become readers of Thucydides and to judge for themselves whether, for example, the Peloponnesian War was truly inevitable or might have been avoided by better diplomacy.

Oh, for a few more hours in the day . . .