Having enjoyed another book by Victor Davis Hanson, The Soul of Battle, I picked this one up when a copy was put up for sale at the Hayward, Wisconsin Public Library over the Memorial Day weekend. Since reading Thucydides freshman year at Grinnell College, the history of the Peloponnesian War ha...
Actually read in June of 2009. The following is a summary of notes (or review) written at the time that I am moving to my Goodreads library. Mexifornia is a very short book, but even though it weighs in at only 150 pages it is one of the most lucid and accurate descriptions of the immigration q...
"Carnage and Culture" is, in my eyes, an example of essentialist history done badly.So, first I'll just briefly address what I mean by "essentialist": That is when the historian claims to have discovered some essence that define and explain whatever is being discussed. This is clearly both a legi...
This is a very general introduction to ancient Greek warfare that will only be of interest to those who are completely unfamiliar with the topic. Hanson's first chapter deals with "Early Greek fighting", here dated 1400 to 750 BC, and is clearly out of his depth when dealing with Mycenaean and "D...
The Thespian had been to Thebes only once before, in the year of the twin musters before the battles at Nemea and Koroneia. But that was more than twenty seasons prior. Mêlon now was bewildered by the unfamiliar sights in the capital of the Boiotians. The Thebans, with the sales from the spoils o...
He was careful to tell Myron to keep Chiôn from it. His three grandsons were gleaning the trees for the last remnants of the olive harvest in the upper orchard. At last he made ready to ride over to Thebes—just for a day or so—to learn of the great march to the south. Perhaps if they could get to...
WAR REFLECTS CULTURE. Weaponry, tactics, notions of discipline, command, logistics—all such elements of battle arise not just from the constraints of terrain, climate, and geography, but also from the nature of a society’s economy, politics, and sociology. This is as true for the American militar...
Had Epaminondas before venturing into Messenia been able to cross the Eu- rotas and burn Sparta, defeat its remaining hoplites inside Laconia, and The Doctrine of Preemptive War 107 free al the Laconian helots as wel , it is very likely that Sparta would have disappeared altogether as a major pol...
This brilliant account covers a millennium of Greek warfare. With specially commissioned battle maps and vivid illustrations, 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 t...
See Plutarch, Themistocles, 10.5. In classical literature (much of it reactionary), the older city of Athenian hoplite farmers is associated with virtue—and to be contrasted to the post–Persian War radical democracy of rootless sailors who came into their own after Salamis. 2. On the details of t...