A unique reconstruction of ancient Greek agricultural life reveals the "other Greece" at the root of Western civilization--the freehold farmers, vine growers, and herdsmen of ancient Attica who constituted the backbone of Greek democracy.

Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization

History

HANSON, Victor Davis

Americas

Free Press

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 their approach to fighting was so ruthless and so successful.
<ul>
<li>Development of the Greek city-state and the rivalries of Athens and Sparta.</li>
<li>Rise of Alexander the Great and the Hellenization of the Western world.</li>
<li>Famous thinkers—Sophocles, Socrates, Demosthenes—who each faced his opponent in battle, armed with spear and shield.</li>
<li>Unsurpassed military theories that still influence the structure of armies and the military today.</li>
</ul>

Wars of the Ancient Greeks (Smithsonian History of Warfare)

Ancient Civilizations

HarpPeren

The origins of Western warfare lie in classical Greece, on the battlefields of Marathon and Delion, and in the strange, terrible head-on collision of Thebans and Spartans at Koroneia. Instead of the ambush, skirmish, or single combat between heroes, the Greeks of the classical age devised a ferocious, brutal, brief, and very destructive form of combat that used armed men of all ages. With this technique, they invented the central act of Western warfare--the decisive infantry battle. In this bold and original study, Victor Davis Hanson presents a new interpretation of Greek warfare and what took place on the battlefield. He argues that the same concept that shaped democracy--an unequivocal, instant resolution to dispute--also spawned the horrific nature of hoplite phalanx battles, and that Western culture may have learned the wrong lessons from them. The Western Way of War draws from an extraordinary range of sources--Greek poetry, drama, and vase painting, as well as historical records--to fashion the first dramatic narrative of the actual mechanics of classical Greek warfare. Approaching his subject from the vantage point of the infantryman, Hanson explores everything from the brutal spear-thrusting and shield-pushing in the phalanx, and the difficulty of fighting in bronze armor, to the mass panic and hysteria. He describes the physical condition and age of the men and their commanders, their weapons, their capabilities, their spirit and morale, and their wounds; and covers the social and political aspects of the soldier's experience, revealing how profoundly the simple, brief, and brutal misery of infantry battle defined a man's entire relationship with his family, his community, and his country. Hanson's compelling account of what happened on the killing fields of the ancient Greeks raises new issues and questions old assumptions about the raison d'être for war.

The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece

Business & Money

Economics

Oxford University Press

The Ancient Greeks--who believed that war is the most important thing humans do--bequeathed to the West an incomparable military legacy that still influences the structure of armies and doctrine. Understand the reasons why their unique approach to fighting was so successful and so relentless, its role at the heart of classical culture, the rise of the city state, agrarian duels, the emergence of Athenian and Spartan power, the development of war as a specialized science, and the collapse of Greek warfare after Alexander the Great. 224 pages, 70 color illus., 80 b/w illus., 7 3/4 x 10 3/8.

The Wars of the Ancient Greeks and Their Invention of Western Military Culture (The Cassell history of Warfare)

Military

Cassell

The Ancient Greeks--who believed war was the most important thing humans do--bequeathed to the West an incomparable military legacy that still influences the structure of armies and doctrine. Passing through a full millennium of war that begins with the rise of the city-state, this colorful portrait of Greek culture explains why their unique approach to fighting was so successful and so relentless. Scrutinize its role at the very heart of classical life, agrarian duels, the emergence of Athenian and Spartan power, the development of war as a specialized science, and the collapse of Greek warfare after Alexander the Great. From Peloponnesia in the 5th century BC to the Hellenisation of the western world, it's an unforgettable tale of battle.

History of Warfare: The Wars of the Ancient Greeks

Classical scholars and military historians have long held that pitched infantry battle in ancient Greek society evolved as a necessary alternative to the more fundamental but exhausting business of warfare, which was the ravaging and destruction of crops - Victor Hanson turns all this on its head. This book continully relates the graphic details of Greek warfare to problems of conflict in our own society.

Western Way of War Infantry Battle

Engineering & Transportation

Engineering

Hodder&Stoughton

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 values–the tradition of dissent, the value placed on inventiveness and adaptation, the concept of citizenship–which have consistently produced superior arms and soldiers. Offering riveting battle narratives and a balanced perspective that avoids simple triumphalism, Carnage and Culture demonstrates how armies cannot be separated from the cultures that produce them and explains why an army produced by a free culture will always have the advantage.

Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power

Reference

Anchor

Victor David Hanson, author of the highly regarded classic The Western Way of War, presents an audacious and controversial theory of what contributes to the success of military campaigns. Examining in riveting detail the campaigns of three brilliant generals who led largely untrained forces to victory over tyrannical enemies, Hanson shows how the moral confidence with which these generals imbued their troops may have been as significant as any military strategy they utilized. Theban general Epaminondas marched an army of farmers two hundred miles to defeat their Spartan overlords and forever change the complexion of Ancient Greece. William Tecumseh Sherman led his motley army across the South, ravaging the landscape and demoralizing the citizens in the defense of right. And George S. Patton commanded the recently formed Third Army against the German forces in the West, nearly completing the task before his superiors called a halt. Intelligent and dramatic, The Soul of Battle is narrative history at it’s best and a work of great moral conviction.

The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny

Historical Study & Educational Resources

The effects of war refuse to remain local: they persist through the centuries, sometimes in unlikely ways far removed from the military arena. In Ripples of Battle,the acclaimed historian Victor Davis Hanson weaves wide-ranging military and cultural history with his unparalleled gift for battle narrative as he illuminates the centrality of war in the human experience. The Athenian defeat at Delium in 424 BC brought tactical innovations to infantry fighting; it also assured the influence of the philosophy of Socrates, who fought well in the battle. Nearly twenty-three hundred years later, the carnage at Shiloh and the death of the brilliant Southern strategist Albert Sidney Johnson inspired a sense of fateful tragedy that would endure and stymie Southern culture for decades. The Northern victory would also bolster the reputation of William Tecumseh Sherman, and inspire Lew Wallace to pen the classicBen Hur. And, perhaps most resonant for our time, the agony of Okinawa spurred the Japanese toward state-sanctioned suicide missions, a tactic so uncompromising and subversive, it haunts our view of non-Western combatants to this day.

Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Hanson compellingly portrays the ways Athens and Sparta fought on land and sea, in city and countryside, and details their employment of the full scope of conventional and nonconventional tactics, from sieges to targeted assassinations, torture, and terrorism. He also assesses the crucial roles played by warriors such as Pericles and Lysander; artists, among them Aristophanes; and philosophers including Sophocles and Plato.

War Like No Other

Random House]

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