Hanson, Victor Davis.

The Wars of the Ancient Greeks : And Their Invention of Western Military Culture.

London, Cassell, 1999. 20.5 cm x 27 cm. 224 pages. Original Hardcover with original dustjacket in protective collector’s mylar. Excellent condition with only minor signs of external wear. Out of print.

Victor Davis Hanson (born September 5, 1953 in Fowler, California) is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient agrarian and military history. He has been a commentator on modern warfare and contemporary politics for National Review, The Washington Times and other media outlets. He is a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in classics and military history at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He chairs the Hoover working group on Military History and Contemporary Conflict as well as being the general editor of the Hoover online journal, Strategika. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College where he teaches an intensive course on world, ancient or military history in the autumn semester, as the Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History since 2004. Hanson is perhaps best known for his 2001 book Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power, a New York Times best-selling book. Hanson’s Warfare and Agriculture (Giardini 1983), his PhD thesis, argued that Greek warfare could not be understood apart from agrarian life in general, and suggested that the modern assumption that agriculture was irrevocably harmed during classical wars was vastly overestimated. The Western Way of War (Alfred Knopf 1989), for which John Keegan wrote the introduction, explored the combatants’ experiences of ancient Greek battle and detailed the Hellenic foundations of later Western military practice. The Other Greeks (The Free Press 1995) argued that the emergence of a unique middling agrarian class explains the ascendance of the Greek city-state, and its singular values of consensual government, sanctity of private property, civic militarism and individualism. In Fields Without Dreams (The Free Press 1996, winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award) and The Land Was Everything (The Free Press 2000, a Los Angeles Times notable book of the year), Hanson lamented the decline of family farming and rural communities, and the loss of agrarian voices in American democracy. The Soul of Battle (The Free Press 1999) traced the careers of Epaminondas, the Theban liberator, William Tecumseh Sherman, and George S. Patton, in arguing that democratic warfare’s strengths are best illustrated in short, intense and spirited marches to promote consensual rule, but bog down otherwise during long occupations or more conventional static battle. (Wikipedia).

• Keywords: Ancient Greece · Catalogue Greek History & Philosophy · Greek History · Military History
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9780304352227
• Inventory Number: 78100AB

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