About Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.
He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.
Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007, and the Bradley Prize in 2008, as well as the Claremont Institute’s Henry Salvatori Award (2022), the American Spirit Award from the National World War II Museum (2021), the Edmund Burke Award (2018), the William F. Buckley Prize (2015), the Claremont Institute’s Statesmanship Award (2006), and the Eric Breindel Award for opinion journalism (2002).
Hanson, who is the fifth successive generation to live in the same house on his family’s farm, was a full-time orchard and vineyard grower from 1980–84, before joining the nearby CSU Fresno campus in 1984 to initiate a classical languages program. In 1991, he was awarded an American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award, which is given yearly to the country’s top undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin.
Hanson has been a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992–93), a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991–92), an Alexander Onassis Fellow (2001), and was named alumnus of the year of the University of California, Santa Cruz (2002). He currently directs the Working Group on the Role of Military History in Contemporary Conflict at the Hoover Institution.
He has served as a presidential appointee to the 1776 Commission (2020) and the American Battle Monuments Commission (2007–08), a board member on the H. F Guggenheim Foundation, and currently serves on the Bradley Foundation Board of Directors.
He was also the visiting Shifrin Professor of Military History at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland (2002–03). He received the Manhattan Institute’s Wriston Lectureship in 2004, and the 2006 Nimitz Lectureship in Military History at UC Berkeley in 2006. He has also been visiting William Simon Professor (2009, 2012, 2013–14, 2023) at the Pepperdine University Graduate School of Public Policy and received an honorary Doctor of Laws from the Pepperdine Law School.
Hanson is the author of hundreds of articles, book reviews, scholarly papers, and newspaper editorials on matters ranging from ancient Greek, agrarian and military history to foreign affairs, domestic politics, and contemporary culture.
He has written or edited 26 books.
His most recent three books, The Dying Citizen (2021), The Case for Trump (2019), and The Second World Wars (2017) were published by Basic Books, as will be the forthcoming The End of Everything (2024).
In The Father of Us All (Bloomsbury, 2011), he collected earlier essays on warfare, ancient and modern. The Savior Generals (Bloomsbury, 2013) analyzes how five generals saved what were considered lost wars. Hanson has published an historical novel The End of Sparta (Bloomsbury, 2012), a realistic retelling of Epaminondas’ invasion and liberation of the helots of Spartan-controlled Messenia.
And in addition:
Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece (1983; paperback ed. University of California Press, 1998);
The Western Way of War (Alfred Knopf, 1989; 2d paperback ed. University of California Press, 2000);
Hoplites: The Ancient Greek Battle Experience (Routledge, 1991; paperback., 1992);
The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization(Free Press, 1995; 2nd paperback ed., University of California Press, 2000);
Fields without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea (Free Press, 1996; paperback, Touchstone, 1997; The Bay Area Book reviewers Non-fiction winner for 1996);
The Land Was Everything: Letters from an American Farmer (Free Press, 2000; a Los Angeles Times Notable book of the year);
The Wars of the Ancient Greeks (Cassell, 1999; paperback, 2001);
The Soul of Battle (Free Press, 1999, paperback, Anchor/Vintage, 2000);
Carnage and Culture (Doubleday, 2001; Anchor/Vintage, 2002; a New York Times bestseller);
An Autumn of War (Anchor/Vintage, 2002);
Mexifornia: A State of Becoming (Encounter, 2003),
Ripples of Battle (Doubleday, 2003),
Between War and Peace (Random House, 2004).
A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War (Random House, 2005) was named one of the New York Times Notable 100 Books of 2006.
Hanson coauthored with John Heath Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (Free Press, 1998; paperback, Encounter Press, 2000).
He coauthored with Bruce Thornton and John Heath, Bonfire of the Humanities (ISI Books, 2001).
He coauthored with Heather MacDonald and Steven Malanga, The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan Than Today’s (Ivan Dee, 2007).
He edited a collection of essays on ancient warfare, Makers of Ancient Strategy (Princeton University Press, 2010).
He edited two PJ Media E-book collections of prior essays: The Seductions of Appeasement (2014) and The Decline and Fall of California (2015).
Hanson has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, New York Post, National Review, Washington Times, Commentary, The Washington Post, Claremont Review of Books, American Heritage, New Criterion, Policy Review, Wilson Quarterly, Weekly Standard, Daily Telegraph, and has been interviewed on National Public Radio, PBS Newshour, Fox News, CNN, and C-Span’s Book TV and In-Depth.
He serves on the editorial boards of the Military History Quarterly and City Journal.
Since 2021 Hanson has written a weekly column for American Greatness, and in 2004, began a weekly syndicated column for Tribune Media Services. From 2006–16, he wrote a weekly column for PJ Media, Works and Days. Hanson was a weekly columnist for National Review Online for 19 years (2001–21).
Hanson was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz (BA, Classics, 1975, ‘highest honors’ Classics, ‘college honors,’ Cowell College), the College Year in Athens (Athens, Raphael Demos Fellow, 1973–74), the American School of Classical Studies, Athens (regular member, 1978–79) and received his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University in 1980, with special emphases in the classical authors Thucydides and Aristophanes.