From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

As soon as I started putting it in the hands of America's last World War II veterans, I had no idea the doors that would open, the stories, it would tell them the legacies it would carry on.

And putting that rifle into their hands just really acted as a microphone.

They remembered all the memories, and I was able to pull out some of the stories never heard before.

This is your host, Scott Bertram.

And that's Andrew Beggio.

He's the author of The Rifle II, Back to the Battlefield with more stories from the veterans of World War II.

We'll talk with Andrew about the book coming up a little bit later on in today's program.

First, we're joined by Dr. Paul Ray, Professor of History and Charles O. Lee and Louise Kaylee

chair in Western Heritage at Hillsdale College. His new book is out now, Sparta's Sicilian

proxy war, the grand strategy of classical Sparta 418 through 413 BC. Dr. Ray, thanks so much for

joining us. That's a pleasure to be with you again. People who go way back with our show,

know we've talked to you about a couple of previous

books in this series. This is the fifth in the series just released. So quickly set the stage

for us, if you could, as we begin. What's the context of this conflict? Where are we? And who are

the major players involved? Okay. Well, the title of the book is Sparta's Sicilian proxy war.

Proxy wars take place when you get enduring strategic rivalries. And within my experience,

as a historian, thinking about this, there are two contexts when this happens. One is when you get a war between a land

power and a sea power, and neither one can deliver a knockout blow to the other. So the thing

just goes on and on and they're episodes of fighting, they get exhausted and so forth. The other

one is the nuclear stalemate.

So we live in a world of proxy wars.

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