So you would recommend Thucydides rather than VDH? Probably a silly question, but courious to your answer.
Must be a reason that name keeps coming up and has been coming up all through history. Might be something to it.
Thucydides comes pretty cheap in paper back.
I also referenced Will Durant. His "The Life Of Greece" offers insight to the times and contrast to the present and is easy, already digested by his great historian mind. One of the reasons I like Newt the history prof/congressman is because he references Will Durant.
I have never read any thing of VDH except his extensive columns available here on FR.