Hanson, Victor Davis

In the decades around the turn of the 21st century, the historian, classicist, and opinion journalist Victor Davis Hanson emerged as one of the leading public intellectuals in the United States. Born into a farming family in California’s central valley in 1953, Hanson worked on the family raisin farm before and after earning a Ph.D. from Stanford University in classical Greek history in 1980. In the years since, he has authored or coauthored more than 15 books and scores of articles, book chapters, and opinion pieces. This entry discusses Hanson’s writings and his views on war making.

Hanson’s importance to military science comes in two areas. The first is as a scholar of the ancient world, in particular warfare in ancient Greece. The second is as ...