Post Peloponnesian War and Pre Alexander: Thebes and Xenophon

The Song of Wrath (documenting the first ten years of the of the Peloponnesian War proper) is now read. 

Not an easy read but well worth it, as "The Peloponnesian War" to me now displaces the Persian Wars as the defining period of Greek Hoplite warfare. 

Ancient Greek politics/life was certainly a dark, dangerous and sinister place to visit as your current 'best friends' were never your friends for very, very long.

So in the end (with Persian help) Sparta wins the Peloponnesian War, so then what? Along comes Thebes to challenge its hegemony but where to "read all about it"?

Reading Plan:

Lazenby will tell the history to 'the fall of Sparta at Leuctra' at the hands of their former Boeotian allies the sturdy agricultural Thebans. Victor Davies Hanson tells of the mercurial Epaminondas and his cunning plan in "Soul of Battle".

I am waiting for the latter to travel from America courtesy of an Amazon order. That gives me a chance to look at Xenophon and  where a lot of Greeks found gainful employment in Persia after The Peloponnesian Wars:

It does not look an easy read, so I might well bed myself in first via Manfredi's novel:

And Waterfield's :

Plenty of reading to be done, just as well as I am back on the caffeine ;)