Victor Davis Hanson–The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern–Videos
War and History, Ancient and Modern
Victor Davis Hanson: War in the Post Modern World – why the new laws of conflict are surreal
Background Articles and Videos
“…Synopsis
A master historian explores how war has shaped our societies—and how societies shape warfare—from Ancient Greece to the present day, in a sweeping survey that offers profound lessons for facing today’s conflicts.
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. “War,” he writes, “is an entirely human enterprise.” Ideologies change, technologies develop, new strategies are invented—but human nature is constant across time and space. The dynamics of warfare in the present age still remain comprehensible to us through careful study of the past. Though many have called the War on Terror unprecedented, its contours would have been quite familiar to Themistocles of Athens or William Tecumseh Sherman. And as we face the menace of a bin Laden or a Kim Jong-Il, we can prepare ourselves with knowledge of how such challenges have been met before.
The Father of Us All brings together much of Hanson’s finest writing on war and society, both ancient and modern. The author has gathered a range of essays, and combined and revised them into a richly textured new work that explores such topics as how technology shapes warfare, what constitutes the “American way of war,” and why even those who abhor war need to study military history. “War is the father and king of us all,” Heraclitus wrote in ancient Greece. And as Victor Davis Hanson shows, it is no lessso today. …”
http://btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com/The-Father-of-Us-All/Victor-Davis-Hanson/e/9781608191659/?itm=3
Victor Davis Hanson
“…Victor Davis Hanson (born 1953 in Fowler, California) is a military historian, columnist, political essayist and former classics professor, notable as a scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a commentator on modern warfare and contemporary politics for National Review and other media outlets, and was a strong supporter of the policies of US President George W. Bush. He was for many years a professor of classics at Cal State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007[1], the Claremont Institute’s Statesmanship Award at its annual Churchill Dinner, and the $250,000 Bradley prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in 2008.[2]
Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm near Fresno, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism.
Hanson, who is of Swedish ancestry, grew up on a family farm at Selma, in the San Joaquin Valley of California. His mother was a lawyer and judge, his father an educator and college administrator. Along with his older brother Nils and fraternal twin Alfred, he attended public schools and graduated from Selma High School. Hanson received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1975[citation needed] and his Ph.D. in classics from Stanford University in 1980. He is a Protestant Christian.[3]
Hanson is currently a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Fellow in California Studies at the Claremont Institute. Until recently, he was professor at California State University, Fresno, where he began teaching in 1984, having created the classics program at that institution.
In 1991 Hanson was awarded an American Philological Association’s Excellence in Teaching Award, which is awarded to undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin. He has been a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991–92), National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992–93), as well as holding the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland (2002–03). He was a visiting professor at Hillsdale College in 2004, 2006, and 2007.[4]
Hanson writes two weekly columns, one for National Review and one syndicated by Tribune Media Services, and has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, American Heritage, City Journal, The American Spectator, Policy Review, the Claremont Review of Books, The New Criterion, and The Weekly Standard, among other publications. In 2006, he started blogging at Pajamas Media. In 2007, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush. …”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Davis_Hanson
Conversations with History: Victor Davis Hanson
