Victor Davis Hanson Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Victor Davis Hanson is an Illie and Martin Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he is a Senior Fellow Resident studying Military History and the Classics. He is a Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale College, a Tribune Media Services nationally syndicated columnist and a professor Emeritus at California State University.

Over the years, he has won numerous fellowships, honors and awards including the Bradley Prize in 2008 and the National Humanities Medal in 2007. Victor has also authored hundreds of scholarly papers, book reviews, articles and newspaper editorials.

He has written on all manner of issues ranging from contemporary culture, ancient Greek, domestic politics, foreign affairs, military and agrarian history. Over the years, he has been the author or editor of more than 17 titles and has also written columns for “The New York Post,” and the “New York Time” among others.

In 1975, Hanson graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a bachelor’s degree. He would then get his doctorate degree in Classics from Stanford University five years later.

Hanson has become one of the United States’ most prolific historians. He was born in Selma California on a farm, the child of one of the first female judges in California and a school administrator.

He had strict parents who ensured that he and his siblings applied themselves. They would often ask what someone was doing whenever they saw Hanson or his brothers just sitting around. His work is united by teaching, scholarship, farming and journalism and the many experiences he had growing up on a farm.
He does see his career as one extended life experience. Having grown up on a farm, he had the tragic perspective on life that he got from his parents and grandparents, which he still has to this day. In school, he studied classics for nearly a decade, both in the US and abroad and then went on to teach for more than twenty years.

All this teaching and studying taught him about unchanging human nature and how predictable the human ordeal could be. Whether it was reading Thucydides or sophocles, or working on a farm the message would be reiterated albeit in different ways.

In his earlier years, Victor Davis Hanson wanted to become a lawyer before he gravitated to the classics, when he went to the University of California. After getting a fellowship to do his doctorate at Stanford, he spent two years in Athens conducting research.

Once he had his doctorate, he realized that there was not much work a classicist qualified for and hence he went back to work on the farm following the death of his grandfather. Still, his scholarship had given him some valuable insights into how ancient Greek society worked.

During this time, he learned that Emilio Gabba, an Italian classicist, had read his dissertation and wanted to publish it. He was atop his tractor when his wife informed him that some guy was calling about wanting to publish his dissertation.

Since he could not afford the $2000 dollar costs of publishing, Gabba convinced the publisher to waive the fee and soon after “Warfare and Agriculture” his debut was published.

Once he published his first, he just could not stop and he went on to publish on almost anything from immigration, farming, classics and more particularly about war.

“A War Like No Other” by Victor Davis Hanson is a provocative and painstakingly researched work that juxtaposes modern concerns with ancient conflict.
Over the course of a generation, Athens the Hellenic polis had fought a bloody war with Sparta, which ultimately led to the destruction of Athens and the end of the golden age for the city state.

Thucydides penned the classical history of the Peloponnesian War that provides a succinct authoritative and vivid narrative to readers through the ages. On his part, Hanson provides something different.

He writes a chronological account reflecting on the political issues of the time, the misery of battle in the many different theaters of the war, the strategic thinking of the actors, and how these events echo into the modern world.

Hanson shows how Sparta and Athens fight on sea and land in the countryside and in the city and how they deployed conventional and unconventional strategies from terrorism and torture, to targeted assasinations and sieges.

He also analyzes the important roles played by thinkers such as Plato and Sophocles, artists such as Aristophanes and warriors such as Lysander and Pericles.

Victor Davis Hanson’s novel examines nine landmark battles stretching from ancient ones such as the Battle of Salamis to the Tet offensive by Hernan Cortes. Hanson explains what makes for the most effective and lethal fighting forces throughout time.

The author looks beyond popular explanations that have cited superior technology and geography and argues that Western values and culture , the concept of citizenship, the value placed on adaptation and inventiveness and the tradition of dissent is what has always made western armies so effective.

Using a balanced perspective and riveting battle narratives, the novel is a demonstration of how armies are deeply woven into and spawned from the cultures that produce them. Hanson argues that an army that comes from a free culture will often have an edge.

He argues that western strategic culture as evidenced in nine historic battles proves that free soldiers perform better than slaves. He cites the naval victory of the Greeks over Persia at Salamis to demonstrate how effective free soldiers can be versus slave one.

Another important battle to prove his point was the Roman recovery after being thoroughly defeated and humiliated by Cannae, which explains the resilience of citizen soldiers over mercenaries.

“The Case for Trump” by Victor Davis Hanson is an exploration of how a renegade businessman rose to become one of the most necessary and successful presidents of all time.

In this work, Hanson explains how Trump with no military or political experience beat more sixteen seasoned Republican rivals, a hostile media establishment, and a Democratic party candidate with a war chest totalling more than a quarter billion, to become one of the most successful presidents in American history.
Trump was the only man who was canny enough to see that the working people of America’s interior needed a voice from the coastal elite from both parties that scorned them.

Only Trump has the energy and instincts to pursue the opportunity to dismantle a corrupt order and win, which enabled him to enact wide ranging policy changes in the US and abroad.

While it is doubtful that the US could survive a succession of volatile presidents such as Trump, after decades of drift he was just the kind of president America needed.

One Response to “Victor Davis Hanson”

1. robert: 3 weeks ago

   One of the most brilliant, learned men in the U.S. today. If only the public would listen to him.

   Reply