Leibowitz, David M., The Ironic Defense of Socrates: Plato's Apology, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Excerpt:

Thirty-five Platonic dialogues have come down to us as genuine. Socrates is present in at least thirty-three and the chief speaker in at least twenty-seven. Yet he is mentioned in a title only this once. Plato’s Socrates first comes to sigh, then, as a man with a defense, a man in trouble. Perhaps this is Plato’s way of saying that, if we want to understand Socrates, we should begin by thinking about his conflict with Athens. If so, this conflict must be more than a stroke of bad luck that befell him (cf. Seventh Letter 325b5–c5); maybe it also provides the vantage point from which we can best understand the core of his life.

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