Books & Publications
The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America
Human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, and tribes. Yet the concept of the “citizen” is historically rare-and was among America’s most valued ideals for over two centuries. But without shock treatment, warns historian Victor Davis Hanson, American citizenship as we have known it may soon vanish.
The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost – From Ancient Greece to Iraq
Stirring portraits of five commanders whose dynamic leadership changed the course of war and history by prominent military historian Victor Davis Hanson.
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power
Examining nine landmark battles from ancient to modern times–from Salamis, where outnumbered Greeks devastated the slave army of Xerxes, to Cortes’s conquest of Mexico to the Tet offensive–Victor Davis Hanson explains why the armies of the West have been the most lethal and effective of any fighting forces in the world.
The Case for Trump
In The Case for Trump, Victor Davis Hanson explains how a celebrity businessman with no political or military experience triumphed over sixteen well-qualified Republican rivals, a Democrat with a quarter-billion-dollar war chest, and a hostile media and Washington establishment to become president of the United States–and an extremely successful president.
The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won
World War II was the most lethal conflict in human history. Never before had a war been fought on so many diverse landscapes and in so many different ways, from rocket attacks in London to jungle fighting in Burma to armor strikes in Libya.
The End of Sparta: A Novel
In this sweeping and deeply imagined historical novel, the battles of one of the greatest generals of ancient Greece, Epaminondas, are recreated.
The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern
Victor Davis Hanson has long been acclaimed as one of our leading scholars of ancient history. In recent years he has also become a trenchant voice on current affairs, bringing a historian’s deep knowledge of past conflicts to bear on the crises of the present, from 9/11 to Iran.
A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War
Victor Davis Hanson has given us painstakingly researched and pathbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the twenty-first century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with our most urgent modern concerns to create his most engrossing work to date,
Between War and Peace: Lessons from Afghanistan to Iraq
Victor Davis Hanson examines the world’s ongoing war on terrorism, from America to Iraq, from Europe to Israel, and beyond. In direct language, he portrays an America making progress against Islamic fundamentalism but hampered by the self-hatred of elite academics at home and the cynical self-interest of allies abroad.
Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think
What defines a “watershed event,” a moment in history that changes the world forever? Victor Davis Hanson tackles this intriguing question in an eye-opening look at three great military encounters: Okinawa, Shiloh, and Delium, an obscure battle of the Peloponnesian War.
Mexifornia: A State of Becoming
Part history, part political analysis, and part memoir, Mexifornia is an intensely personal work. Victor Davis Hanson, a fifth-generation Californian who lives on a family farm in the Central Valley, ponders what has changed in California over the past quarter century, examining how the state and the Southwest more broadly―indeed, the entire nation―have been altered by hemorrhaging borders.
An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism
On September 11, 2001, hours after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Victor Davis Hanson wrote an article in which he asserted that the United States, like it or not, was now at war and had the moral right to respond with force. An Autumn of War opens with that essay, encouraging readers to think more deeply about the attacks, the war, and their lessons for all of us.
Bonfire of the Humanities: Rescuing the Classics in an Impoverished Age
The acclaimed authors of Who Killed Homer? and Plagues of the Mind unsparingly document the degeneration of a central, if beleaguered, discipline — classics — and reveal the root causes of its decline, calling for a return to “academic populism,” an approach characterized by accessible, unspecialized writing, selfless commitment to students and teaching, and respect for the legacy of freedom and democracy that the ancients bequeathed to the West.
The Land Was Everything: Letters from an American Farmer
Victor Davis Hanson offers a firsthand perspective on a farmer’s continual struggle against drought, disease, insects, rodents, government bureaucracy, financial overload, and other challenges confronting the modern farmer and explains how these difficulties promote such qualities as independence, stoicism, and resolution.
The Wars of the Ancient Greeks and Their Invention of Western Military Culture
In this brilliant account, Victor Davis Hanson takes the reader into the heart of Greek warfare, classical beliefs, and heroic battles. This colorful portrait of ancient Greek culture explains why their approach to fighting was so ruthless and so successful.
The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny
Victor Davis Hanson presents an audacious and controversial theory of what contributes to the success of military campaigns. Intelligent and dramatic, The Soul of Battle is narrative history at it’s best and a work of great moral conviction.
Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom
With straightforward advice and informative readings of the great Greek texts, Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath show how we might still save classics and the Greeks for future generations. Who Killed Homer? is must reading for anyone who agrees that knowledge of classics acquaints us with the beauty and perils of our own culture.
Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Ideal
Drawing on his experience as a farmer and a classicist to eloquently eulogize the agrarian lifestyle vanishing before his eyes, Victor Davis Hanson calls on America to take notice of its lost simplicity and purity before it is too late.
The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization
Victor Davis Hanson shows us that the real “Greek revolution” was not the rise of a free and democratic urban culture, remarkable as this was, but the historic innovation of the independent family farm. “The other Greeks,” Hanson contends, gave Greek culture its distinctive emphasis on private property, constitutional government, contractual agreements, infantry warfare, and individual rights.
Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience
Incorporating research found in ancient literary, iconographic, epigraphic, and archaeological sources, this book, edited by Victor Davis Hanson, explores the experiences of the soldiers who conducted battle on the small plains of ancient Greece.
The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece
In this bold, original study, Victor Davis Hanson shows how the Greeks of the classical age invented not only the central idea of Western politics but also the central act of Western warfare, the decisive infantry battle.
Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece
The ancient Greeks were for the most part a rural, not an urban, society. And for much of the Classical period, war was more common than peace. Almost all accounts of ancient history assume that farming and fighting were critical events in the lives of the citizenry. In Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece, Victor Davis Hanson describes the relationship between agriculture and warfare on life in ancient Greek communities.