The move to Canada resulted in part because of difficulties he encountered finding a tenure-track position in the U.S.A. because of his political beliefs, as McCarthyism threatened academic freedom.
From 1992 until his death, Zagorin was a research Fellow of the Edgar F. Shannon Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
His next work Ways of Lying (1990) was in effect a counterpart study that looked at the effects on individuals as early modern states demanded various forms of loyalty oaths, often in pursuit of religious uniformity, and the emergence of counter-theories about the practice and acceptability of resisting such demands—the roots of the American notion of the right against self-incrimination.
Zagorin argues the work is more than a mere chronicle of the conflict between Athens and Sparta, being also a story of politics, decision-making, the uses of power, and the human and communal experience of war.
In his view the work remains of permanent interest because of the exceptional intellect that Thucydides brought to the writing of history, and to the originality and intensity of vision that inform his narrative.