Contents -- Acknowledgments -- CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICS OF FEAR -- Retracting the "Intractable" -- Security, Speech Acts, and the Shield of Achilles -- Summary: Plotting the Course -- CHAPTER 2 THE GOD OF FIRE'S GIFT: THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES AND THE LOGIC OF FEAR -- The 30-Second Iliad -- The Shield of Achilles -- The Arms of Agamemnon -- Beauty, Hope and Fear -- Sarpedon's Body -- The Shield in a Modern Context -- Achilles and Priam: Setting aside the Shield -- CHAPTER 3 UNHEEDED WARNINGS -- Sophocles -- Ajax -- Philoctetes -- Thucydides: The Shield in Athenian Hands -- Machiavelli: The Prince as Shield Bearer -- CHAPTER 4 MIMESIS AS RESISTANCE -- Shields and Rings: Plato against the Poets -- Plato as a Poet -- Plato as a Shield Bearer -- CHAPTER 5 WHAT BEGINS WITH CRATYLUS, LEADS TO BAUDRILLARD -- The Shield as Simulacrum -- The Spirit of Terrorism -- "Hyperrealist Abjection" or the Shield of Baudrillard -- Perseus, Plato, Baudrillard -- CHAPTER 6 LIFE AS LITERATURE: POLITICS AS POETICS -- Odysseus: Artfulness above All Else -- The Homeric Question -- Nietzsche's Language -- Nietzsche's View: From High Mountains -- CHAPTER 7 EKPHRASIS AS CRITIQUE -- From Perseus to Paris -- Auerbach: The Insights of Comparative Mimesis -- Krieger: The Still Mo(ve)ment of Ekphrasis -- Mitchell: Ekphrastic Hope -- Becker: Breaking the Illusion -- Case Study: Obama as Shield Bearer -- CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION -- APPENDIX A -- APPENDIX B -- Bibliography.