Victor Davis Hanson Livres

A definitive account of World War II by America's preeminent military historian

The New York Times bestselling author of The Case for Trump explains the decline and fall of the once cherished idea of American citizenship. 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. In The Dying Citizen, Hanson outlines the historical forces that led to this crisis. The evisceration of the middle class over the last fifty years has made many Americans dependent on the federal government. Open borders have undermined the idea of allegiance to a particular place. Identity politics have eradicated our collective civic sense of self. And a top-heavy administrative state has endangered personal liberty, along with formal efforts to weaken the Constitution. As in the revolutionary years of 1848, 1917, and 1968, 2020 ripped away our complacency about the future. But in the aftermath, we as Americans can rebuild and recover what we have lost. The choice is ours.

The book explores President Obama's influence on U.S. foreign policy, highlighting a shift towards a therapeutic approach rooted in victimhood and reminiscent of Jimmy Carter's ideology. It argues that under Obama's leadership, the United States has moved away from its traditional role as a defender of the postwar order, instead embracing a perspective that challenges established systems of defense, values, alliances, and global interests.

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 less so today.

Part history, part political analysis and part memoir, Mexifornia is an intensely personal work by one of our most important writers. Hanson is perhaps best known for his military histories and especially his social commentary about America and its response to terror after 9/11, but he is also a fifth-generation Californian who runs a family farm in the Central Valley and has written eloquent elegies on the decline of the small farm, Fields Without Dreams and The Land Was Everything. Like those books, Mexifornia ponders what has changed in California over the last quarter-century. This time, Hanson's concern is how the state, the Southwest more broadly, and indeed the entire nation have been altered by America's hemorrhaging borders, and how our disordered immigration policies are perhaps most harmful to the Mexican immigrants who come seeking a better life.

An instant New York Times bestseller: From an award-winning historian and regular Fox contributor, the true story of how Donald Trump has become one of the most successful presidents in history -- and why America needs him now more than ever

Focusing on the impact of massive illegal immigration from Mexico, the book explores how California's identity and social fabric are evolving amid challenges in border control and integration. Victor Davis Hanson, a fifth-generation Californian, blends history, political analysis, and memoir to reflect on the consequences of immigration policies and the dynamics between various societal groups. He emphasizes the importance of assimilation and intermarriage as potential solutions to the issues faced, while providing a personal narrative of his experiences in a changing California.

The Greeks of the classical age invented not only the central idea of Western politics—that the power of state should be guided by a majority of its citizens—but also the central act of Western warfare, the decisive infantry battle. Instead of ambush, skirmish, or combat between individual heroes, the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. devised a ferocious, brief, and destructive head-on clash between armed men of all ages. In this bold, original study, Victor Davis Hanson shows how this brutal enterprise was dedicated to the same outcome as consensual government—an unequivocal, instant resolution to dispute. Linking this new style of fighting to the rise of constitutional government, Hanson raises new issues and questions old assumptions about the history of war. A new preface addresses recent scholarship on Greek warfare.

"A colorful history of the Peloponnesian War and its dramatic repercussions on the history of ancient Greece brings to life the events of the conflict, its impact on the great city-states of Athens and Sparta, and the personalities involved, including Pericles, Alcibiades, Sophocles, Thucydides, and others"--www.abebooks.com

Through depictions of historic battles, the author exposes the connection between the West's superiority on the battlefield and its rise to world dominance, including controversial arguments ignited by the recent words of various historians