Victor Davis Hanson

World War II was the most lethal conflict in human history. Hanson examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war. He argues that despite its novel industrial barbarity, neither the war's origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising.

"A New York Times-bestselling historian charts how and why societies from ancient Greece to the modern era chose to utterly destroy their foes, and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time. War can settle disputes, topple tyrants, and bend the trajectory of civilization--sometimes to the breaking point. From Troy to Hiroshima, moments when war has ended in utter annihilation have reverberated through the centuries, signaling...

"Most of human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, or tribes. The concept of the "citizen," an idea we take for granted, is historically quite rare-and was, until recently, amongst America's most profoundly cherished ideals. But without shock treatment, warns historian and conservative political commentator Victor Davis Hanson, American citizenship as we have known it for well over two centuries may soon vanish. In The Dying Citizen,...

Victor Davis Hanson locates the cause of our immigration quagmire in the opportunistic coalition that stymies immigration reform and, even worse, stifles any honest discussion of the present crisis. Conservative corporations, contractors and agribusiness demand cheap wage labor from Mexico, whatever the social consequences. Meanwhile, "progressive" academics, journalists, government bureaucrats and La Raza advocates see illegal aliens as a vast new...

"Winner of the 2010 PROSE Award in Classics & Ancient History, Association of American Publishers" Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. His many books include A War Like No Other and Between War and Peace. He is a syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services, and is the current codirector...

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. Looking beyond popular explanations such as geography or superior technology, Hanson argues that it is in fact Western culture and...

For over two millennia in the West, familiarity with the literature, philosophy, and values of the Classical World has been synonymous with education itself. The traditions of the Greeks explain why Western Culture's unique tenets of democracy, capitalism, civil liberty, and constitutional government are now sweeping the globe. Yet the general public in America knows less about its cultural origins than ever before, as Classical education rapidly...

A sweeping history of the often-violent conflict between Islam and the West, shedding a revealing light on current hostilities The West and Islam--the sword and the scimitar--have clashed since the mid-seventh century, when, according to Muslim tradition, the Byzantine emperor rejected Prophet Muhammad's order to abandon Christianity and convert to Islam, unleashing a centuries-long jihad on Christendom. Sword and Scimitar chronicles the significant...