The text is that of the new and spirited translation by Walter Blanco. Jennifer Tolbert Roberts's introduction and annotations provide vital background information. Backgrounds and Contexts provides supplementary selections from Xenophon, Herodotus, Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the twentieth-century journalist, Walter Karp. Interpretations includes richly varied assessments of Thucydides. The contributors include Theodor Gomperz, Francis M. Cornford, Charles H. Chochrane, R. G. Collingwood, Albert Cook, Cynthia Farrar, Adam Parry, Glen Bowersock, Robert Gilpin, Michael Doyle, and Gregory Crane.