Paul Cartledge
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Historians, like the Greek city-states in their day, don't really know how to take the Spartans. They were admirable in their war making (a feared opponent), yet repugnant in their social practices: enslaving whole populations as war chattel -- for centuries, separating children from their families to be raised by the state for the state's needs, inculcating a warrior ethic that shamed the survivors of battles into suicide. In fact Thermopylae was a battle in which 300 Spartans, led by King Leonidas, were expected to not come back, and the one survivor who did was spurned by his society. He was miserable, and one year later in the battle of Plataea he left the Spartan line in a berserk-like, suicidal charge to make amends for having survived Thermopylae. (To no avail, it was bad form to break the line.)
So the main problem is that one of the most repressive, totalitarian societies ever known in Western history fought for the freedom of the Greeks against Xerxes and the Persian empire. Not only that, their stand at Thermopylae undoubtedly bought enough time for the Athenians to resist Xerxes fleet at Salamis, forcing his retreat. We can admire and be grateful for that, since the great flowering of Greek culture occurred after the Persian War.
This is a well told history of Thermopylae: background, context, immediate outcome, long term significance to the history of the world, etc. Perhaps the best chapter is the epilogue in which Cartledge recounts how historians and philosophers have viewed the Spartans over time. Totalitarian regimes (i.e. Nazi Germany) admired the Spartans, but so did Plato and Rousseau. At their best the Spartans were willing to die for the idea of freedom, even if the individuals didn't really have a choice.
