THE SAVIOR GENERALS: HOW FIVE GREAT COMMANDERS SAVED WARS THAT WERE LOST - FROM ANCIENT GREECE to IRAQ by Victor Davis Hanson

Published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Press

Victor Davis Hanson, best known for his works on Ancient Greece, looks at five different generals from five different time periods and discusses how these generals became what he calls "Savior Generals". This book is very similar in structure to his 2003 book Ripples of Battle.

Hanson picked five generals to discuss in The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost - From Ancient Greece to Iraq.  All are from the West and he notes that this is not an all-inclusive list. They are not even particularly spread out well over history. One is from Ancient Greece, one from the early Byzantine Empire and three of them are American generals. In my opinion, not all of them fit the mold perfectly. In fact, I think only two of them do.

To be a Savior General you have to have been on the outs with the establishment and then, when everything has fallen apart and the situation is about as dire as possible, the establishment command structure looks to you to come in with your unorthodox ways and save the day. You also have to have an odd sense of how people work - a sense that makes you approach the crisis at hand in a different way than everyone else. Once the victory is won, the "Savior General" is removed in some way.

Themistocles (524-459 B.C.)

Hanson starts out with Themistocles, the general turned admiral who almost single-handedly created the Athenian navy in order to prepare for a repeat Persian invasion after the Athenians defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. While most Athenians assumed that the Persians were not going to return after their defeat at Marathon, Themistocles understood the true size and scope of the Persian military and knew that the military losses at Marathon were a drop in the bucket compared to their true potential. When the Persians returned it was with "the largest amphibious invasion of Europe until the 1944 Normandy landing more than 2,400 years later." (p.23)

While the Sparta's famed 300 soldiers and their king slowed the Persian advance  for a few days at Thermopylae, the Athenians fled their city state using the navy that Themistocles had pushed for so hard between invasions. Hanson goes into detail about how Themistocles argued, cajoled, harangued and demagogued this fleet into existence and then repeated his performance all over again with the Greek allied leaders as they tried to figure out if they should even engage the Persians or if they should simply surrender. Luck, skill, sleight of hand, superior knowledge of the waters around Athens all contributed to a victory when defeat seemed so sure.

No general in this book was so far behind the 8 ball as Themistocles. His country (the Athenian city-state) was lost. It had been looted and burned and occupied. Thousands of foot soldiers were lost. For all practical purposes all that was left was the navy. but, Themistocles had prepared his country for exactly this moment and, even they they were heavily outnumbered (366 Greek ships against more than 600 Persian ships), the plan worked. Despite the great victory, Themistocles died in exile.

Belisarius (500-565 A.D.)

By comparison to Themistocles, Belisarius's story is not nearly so dramatic. He mostly fought on the Byzantine frontier - only once was the Empire itself at stake and even then, it probably could have been recovered easily enough if some troops had been recalled. He was a soldier always, rarely dabbling in court politics, unlike Themistocles who was a gifted politician for far longer than he was in actual combat.

The only known portrait
of Belisarius. 

But, the career of Belisarius is remarkable in that he went from one lost cause to another and made the Byzantine Empire (really the Eastern Roman Empire) grow to the point where it nearly re-captured most of the combined Eastern and Western Roman Empires. His Emperor, the famed Justinian, never quite trusted Belisarius and deprived him of resources, men or clear orders necessary to finish the jobs properly. As I was reading, I found myself wondering if Justinian was a genius in his own right who was depriving a potential rival of the resources he needed to overthrown him, or a twit that was depriving a talented general of the resources he needed to complete his mission. Was he a brazen leader who was expanding his empire with a minimum of resources because that's all that was available or was he timid and just refused to completely commit to a military course of action. I decided that the answer to all of these questions was YES. Yes, he knew Belisarius was a potential rival and he was a twit for depriving him. He wanted to grow the Empire while the opportunity was there but he was all too aware of the risks of sending too many soldiers abroad. 

Despite his years of loyal service and saving the Emperor from a revolt and an attempted invasion of his capital, Belisarius was forcibly retired and brought back to the capital so the Emperor and his spies could keep an eye on him. 

William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)

In a way, the story of Sherman is the story of two Savior Generals. Sherman fought in the first major battle of the American Civil War and even earned an important command and then had a nervous breakdown. Up-and-coming general Ulysses S. Grant discovered Sherman and brought him along with him. When Grant earned promotions, Sherman did, too. 

When Grant was promoted to be the head of the Union Army and headed to Washington, D.C. to confront Robert E. Lee, Sherman took over Grant's forces in the West and began to move on Atlanta.This is where Sherman does the atypical thing. Rather than seeking battle or blindly making a dash for the city, Sherman tries to outmaneuver his opponent in order to take the city with a minimum of losses.

Grant struggled with Lee and offered a demoralizing series of battles with massive casualties as Grant and Lee's armies grappled all over northern Virginia, rarely separating more than a few days before re-engaging and generating thousands of more Union casualties. 

Most historians believe that Lincoln's re-election was far from assured in 1864 and that Sherman's taking of Atlanta right before the election certainly helped. This is the crux of Hanson's argument for Sherman being a Savior General. Sherman helped ensure the re-election of Lincoln and Lincoln's re-election helped ensure the defeat of the Confederacy. 

1864 Portrait of Sherman
by Matthew Brady.

On top of that, Hanson argues that Sherman's infamous March to the Sea was a revolution in warfare - a war on the property used to wage war rather than on the people that were fighting in the war. He argues that this revolution was more merciful than what was typical in most Civil War campaigns because it mostly avoided casualties with the focus on property.

Hanson has an amazing grasp of the Civil War for an historian that focuses on Ancient Greece. I enjoyed his analysis of Sherman but was frustrated with his dismissal of Grant as a Savior General as well. Before Grant arrived in the East the call was always, "On to Richmond!" with little concern about the Confederate army in the field except the degree that it kept the Union Army out of the Confederate capital. However, Grant re-focused the army on Lee, knowing that eventually Lee would simply run out of men and supplies. Grant's relentless effort ensured that Sherman would never have to face reinforcing units detached from Lee's army.

Sherman deviates from the mold of Savior General in his post-war career. Unlike most of the generals he profiled, Sherman had a successful post-war career.

Matthew Ridgway (1895-1993)

When Ridgway arrived in what remained of South Korea in December of 1950 the war in Korea had already been lost, won and lost again - in just six months.

Ridgway with his characteristic grenade
on his right strap and a first aid kit on
the left.

Ridgway was unpopular with the brass because he had plenty of opinions and never failed to share them. But, in just 100 days he moved the United Nations forces from a defensive (if not outright retreating) posture to an offensive footing and began pushing the North Korean and Chinese forces back across the pre-war border. 

His style of being with the fighting men and seeing what was really going on rather than being told through intermediaries re-invigorated a largely defeated army. He brought enthusiasm, proper supplies for the winter and an argument as to why this war in this place was important and he shared them all freely with his men. He also recognized the American advantages in this war (superior air power, having occupied Japan nearby as a source of men and supplies among other). He also limited the war aims to simply restoring the pre-war border rather than conquering North Korea. By doing that, he helped make the current truce that has largely held for 60+ years possible. 

Sadly, the Korean War is often referred to as "the forgotten war" and Ridgway's amazing success is often forgotten.

David Patraeus (born 1952)

Perhaps the most controversial Savior General to be added to Hanson's list is David Patraeus. 

This book was written before his disgrace over his mistress/biographer and her access to sensitive documents and information.

No matter his personal failings and his failure in Afghanistan, Patreus had success in Iraq with George W. Bush's unpopular "Surge" from January of 2007 to May of 2008. Hanson details how Patreus had been removed from the Iraq theater earlier and then brought in to implement the Surge strategy that he had been advocating to calm the fighting in the unpopular Iraq War.

This strategy seemed almost counter-intuitive. Embrace the very communities that are attacking the American army. Move among them, become a part of those communities. And, once trust is earned, convince those communities that they should turn on Al-Qaeda and embrace the new government. It cost more lives lost at first because the trust had not yet been earned and the American soldiers were more exposed. 

Reading about the real progress made with the Surge was bittersweet considering the current problems in Iraq with ISIS and all of the beheadings, murder, mayhem and chaos as well as Patreus's fall from grace. 

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5. 

More information on this book can be found here: The Savior Generals

Reviewed on January 20, 2104.

RIPPLES of BATTLE: HOW WARS of the PAST STILL DETERMINE HOW WE FIGHT, HOW WE LIVE, and HOW WE THINK by Victor Davis Hanson

Excellent and Quite Enjoyable.

Originally published in 2003 by Doubleday

We all understand that wars can profoundly change the world. History is full of wars that brought giant transformations, such as Alexander's conquest of Persia (and just about everything else he saw) and the spread of Hellenistic culture, the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and Peru and the Cold War stand off that shaped the world after World War II. If you have ever heard the phrase "In a post-9/11 world..." that tells you that the world has been changed by the War on Terror. 

The simple idea behind Ripples of Battle is that it's not just wars but oftentimes single battles that change things. And, sometimes, it's not the battle that everyone knows, but a lesser-known battle that causes the most change. He uses the familiar image of a rock tossed into a lake with the outgoing ripples from the point of impact being the change. And, he does a pretty thorough job of showing that these ripples can go on and on for a very long time.

Hanson uses three battles in his formal discussion: Okinawa in World War II (April 1-July 2, 1945, Shiloh in the American Civil War (April 6-7, 1862) and Delium in the Peloponnesian War (November, 424 B.C.). He also draws similar conclusions about the 9/11 attacks in his introduction and epilogue.

Okinawa

Damage to the flight deck of the USS Bunker Hill
by a kamikaze near Okinawa on May 11, 1945. 

He begins with Okinawa in World War II. In many ways this is personal because his father's cousin and undoubtedly the author's namesake, Victor Hanson, was killed in battle at Okinawa. This was the first battle on an island that was truly considered to be Japanese and the Americans needed it to continue their aerial assault on the Japanese main islands. The 110,000 Japanese soldiers on the island were dug in and determined to make the conquest of the island so difficult that the Americans would be convinced that an invasion of the rest of Japan would be impossible.
The Americans came with an initial invasion force bigger than that used in Normandy the year before with 1,600 ships and 500,000 American fighting men and the potential use of up to 12,000 combat aircraft. These Americans fought against kamikaze aircraft attacks (a harbinger of the suicide bomber and the 9/11 attacks) and against foot soldiers that were ordered to fight to the death, no matter how terrible the odds. The Americans responded with the flamethrower (literally burning out Japanese defensive positions) and by bombing kamikaze airbases before they could even get the planes in the air. Cold and calculating military measures that were effective and preserved American lives.

And, in the end, they came to the conclusion that the Japanese wanted them to reach - the Japanese main islands could not be conquered by traditional means. So, they decided to use nuclear weapons instead. A cold and calculated measure to preserve American lives. A ripple generated by this battle is the belief that America ought to come at its enemies with unimaginable military force to overwhelm them and prevent long, ugly battles like Okinawa. We tried to bomb North Vietnam into submission (with quantity strikes rather than quality strikes), we called the start of the Iraq War "Shock and Awe" in order to demonstrate we could hit our enemies where we wanted when we wanted.

Shiloh

The second battle is Shiloh. This is my favorite section of the book because I am a giant student of the Civil War. Hanson has not written much on the Civil War, which is too bad because he has an amazing grasp on the issues and personalities of the war. 

Shiloh begins with a sneak attack on Ulysses S. Grant's army camped at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River, a few miles north of the Tennessee-Mississippi state line on April 6. For months, Grant and Don Carlos Buell had been defeating and out-maneuvering Confederate armies and had pushed through Kentucky and almost through Tennessee. Buell and Grant were poised to combine their separate armies and there was no way that the combined Confederate defenders could stop it. So, they combined without anyone's knowledge and, using a P.G.T. Beauregard plan and led by Albert Sidney Johnston, they completely surprised Grant's army before Buell could arrive.

On paper, it was a master stroke and for the first few hours it looked to be a complete victory. It would have been but for the rise of William Tecumseh Sherman. Before Shiloh Sherman was largely discredited (he'd had a mental breakdown) and he bears more blame than most for the success of the sneak attack itself. But, he rallied the men, calmly rallying them and turning a rout into an orderly retreat. In the melee he was shot through the hand, he had multiple horses shot out from under him and his coat was riddled with bullet holes. When Grant met up with him during the battle he realized that Sherman had things well in hand (as well as they could be, in any case) and focused on other areas of the field.

This is the moment that Sherman became Sherman - the general that became Grant's trusted second for the rest of the war. It is also the last large-scale pitched battle that Sherman fought in, a fact that I had not realized until Hanson pointed it out. When Sherman fought on his own in the Atlanta campaign and the March to the Sea he avoided the large pitched battle in favor of maneuvering his opponent out of position and forcing a retreat. Not that there was no fighting, but there were no more Shilohs. For Sherman, the war would not be won when the South's armies were vanquished but when it's ability to maintain those armies was destroyed. He invented total war on a large scale and he gutted the Confederacy while hardly losing a soldier, especially when compared to the battles that Grant was waging against Lee in Virginia.

It is also the moment when Albert Sidney Johnston died and the Myth of the Lost Cause came to life (within days of the battle). Whether Johnston would have been able to lead the Confederates to victory in the West is a subject to debate. Johnston's skills as a leader are unclear based on what he achieved before he died. He lost giant chunks of the West and any chance to have Kentucky join the Confederacy due to poor initial troop placements. His skill at making his orders clear in battle was excellent but could the Confederates have overwhelmed Grant's men if Johnston had lived?

Confederate General Nathan
Bedford Forrest (1821-1877)

One Confederate general who comes into his own in this battle is Nathan Bedford Forrest - arguably the South's foremost cavalry man. He was truly a self-taught talent. This battle made his reputation, especially his famed escape after being the last man to be wounded after the battle. His reputation as a scrapper and master of guerrilla war tactics served him well as the first leader of the Ku Klux Klan after the war. He was probably the only man with the enough stature, enough venom and enough anger to have led that Klan to any level of success.

Perhaps most interesting is the case of Lew Wallace, the general who arrived late with the Union reinforcements and paid for it (unfairly, in his mind) with his career. But, he used that sense of being wronged as an inspiration to write Ben-Hur, the story of a man who is wrongly accused and loses everything. Ben-Hur was a publishing phenomenon, much like Harry Potter and Twilight have been nowadays. But, this one was one of the first.

Delium

You have probably never heard of Delium. I know I did not know it by name. I knew of two things that happened at the battle before I read this book, but I did not know the name of the battle itself. I knew that Socrates had almost been killed in a battle but was saved by Alcibiades. And, I knew that Athens lost that same battle. 

This battle was part of the Peloponnessian War - the war between Athens and its allies and Sparta and its allies that lasted almost thirty years. Fifty thousand men fought in it, but no great generals were involved. No Spartans were involved. Instead, this was a sloppy attempt by Athens to defeat a confederation of city states under the leadership of Thebes so that Athens could focus on its more powerful enemies in Sparta.

But, in this battle Socrates lived, rather than died. Alcibiades made his reputation and the birth of Western battle tactics may have been born.

Hanson ends with the discussion of tactics, but it is almost an afterthought to the chapter. In this battle, the army that faced the Athenians was considered to be the equivalent of Ancient Greek rustics - unrefined and definitely not the equal of the Athenians in culture. But, in this battle they did more than the traditional giant scrum match of interlocking shields that made up most hoplite battles. Instead, the held troops in reserve and moved them around during the battle. Basics to us, nowadays, but revolutionary at the time.

Socrates (470/469-399 B.C.)

This change in tactics caused the Athenian line to crumble. Socrates was in that line and he nearly died. Pre-Delium Socratic thought was not the philosophy that he is famous for. His best work came after this brush with death and it is that thought that inspired Plato and through Plato inspired Aristotle. What would Western thought have been without Socrates, Plato and Aristotle?

Alcibiades made his reputation as a cavalry officer in this battle. He was already marked to be a future leader of Athens. His beauty, his attitude, his intelligence and his ability to sway the crowd guaranteed that. But, this battle thrust him to the forefront.  If only he had died...

Alcibiades' career defies explanation. He conceived of and led the Athenian attack on Sicily, widely considered to have been a military disaster of the first order for Athens. However, he defected to Sparta rather than face a tribunal in Athens for defacing religious statues. He led Spartan troops against Athens and was successful until he fled Sparta (he had an affair with the king's wife) and joined with the traditional enemy of the Greeks, the Persians.  After advising the Persians, he went back to Athens and served as a highly successful military leader, then went back to the Persians and was then assassinated.  

Of the three battles, this chapter is the one in most need of a bit of editing, in my opinion. It goes on a little too long, but that is to be expected - Ancient Greece is Hanson's bread and butter.

So, does Hanson prove his point with these three battles? Of course he does. But, he does more than that. He tells three interesting stories of history and demonstrates that no action has occurs in an historical vacuum, especially not battles because so much rides on the outcomes and the sheer chance and chaos of it all. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: RIPPLES of BATTLE: HOW WARS of the PAST STILL DETERMINE HOW WE FIGHT, HOW WE LIVE, and HOW WE THINK by Victor Davis Hanson.

Reviewed on July 4, 2014.

A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War by Victor Davis Hanson

Published by Random House Trade Paperbacks in September of 2006.

A War Like No Other is classical historian Victor Davis Hanson's offering on the Peloponnesian War - the 27 year struggle between the Delian League (Athens and its allies) and the Peloponnesian League (Sparta and its allies) that ran on and off again from 431 to 404 B.C.

Hanson's book is perhaps also a "book like no other" if I may borrow a phrase. Despite the prominently placed quote for the New York Times on the front cover proclaiming that it is a contemporary retelling of the war, this is not a narrative history of the war. Rather, it does exactly what the subtitle promises - it tells the reader HOW the war was fought. It analyzes the techniques, the weapons, the strategies and the tactics but it is not a history per se. The book vaguely follows the course of the war, but often shifts backwards and forwards through the decades of the war and even before and after the war.

Victor Davis Hanson

Giving this one a rating is tricky. It is well-researched and well-written. Hanson does a tremendous job of linking the events of the past with more current events, such as World War II, the Cold War and terrorism. In a way, you could say that the quote (and title of the book) from the ancient historian Thucydides was really not true, this war was not a war like no other, instead at least parts of it are like every war that followed since.

While well-written, I think that Hanson's decision to break the book up into thematic units ("Fire", "Disease", "Terror", "Armor", etc.) made the book less strong than if it had been told in more of a narrative manner. Hanson provided tons of endnotes to document his work which is a strength and indicative of the quality of work that Hanson creates, it was also quite annoying. Not the notes themselves, but the fact that they were endnotes with commentary requiring the reader to constantly flip back and forth to the end of the book and to keep two sets of bookmarks- one for the text and one for the endnotes. If a writer plans to write additional commentary in his or her notes common decency would suggest that footnotes are better for the reader. The continuity and flow of the main text is not broken by constant flipping to the back of the book. Shelby Foote did this to great effect in his gigantic 3 volume Civil War series. Tom Holland uses both in his book "Rubicon" - notes at the end, additional commentary at the bottom of the text.

As a history teacher, I found immediate uses for portions of the book in my classroom. I read to my class from Hanson's description of life on the Greek naval vessels and was able to use his information to give a brief description of the war and the experience of the soldier. I do recommend this book for serious world history teachers and any aficionados of classical ancient history.

I rate this history 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: A War Like No Other.

Reviewed on October 6, 2007.

Five Cities That Ruled the World: How Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London and New York Shaped Global History by Douglas Wilson

Wow! What a Stinker!

Published in 2009 by Thomas Nelson

When I saw this title I was thrilled to pick this book up. I am a high school history teacher that loves classical history. I was eager to see what someone had to say about these 5 world class cities.

What I got was a poorly written mishmash of ideas that sort of worked themselves into some kind of theme that sort of held together to make a vague point from time to time. In other words, it read like one of my high school student's research papers.

I am a fan of Thomas Nelson publishing - they are a religious publisher that generally holds themselves to high standards. This book, however, makes me doubt my previous impression. Five Cities has a clever premise, an interesting cover but has no real substance and is full of too much supposition and theory rather than solid history.

What do I mean?

To be specific, on pages 8-9 he asserts that the Phoenicians, as part of a trade alliance with King Solomon, set across the Indian and Pacific Oceans (colonizing Polynesia along the way - and ignoring the fact that the Phoenicians preferred to hug the coastline when they sailed) to trade with and establish mines in Central and South America. They also created the Incan and Olmec civilizations. Also, they colonized Massachusetts. Really? Sure - just completely ignore DNA testing, decades of research and just go back to the old long-discredited theory that the Mayans must have really been a lost tribe of Israel because there's no way an Indian could have conceived of a city or a pyramid. He is asserting that only Middle Easterners could've imagined pyramids, despite the fact that every inhabited continent but Australia had pyramids structures of some sort.

I should have stopped right there, but I didn't. I finished the whole thing, mostly for the same reasons that people gawk at car accidents - I had to see how bad it really was.

The Jerusalem chapter is extraordinarily weak because it does not focus on Jerusalem's role as a cradle for 3 of the world's 5 largest religions. Rather, it focuses on the New Jerusalem mentioned in the Book of Revelations. Using an end of the world version of Jerusalem to explain why Jerusalem WAS important is poor logic at best and disingenuous at worst.

The exception to the rule that the Jerusalem chapter is very poor is the section on the Crusades (pp. 28-32). It was quite good.

When he moves on to Athens, he quotes Homer as though he were a trusted historian, not a storyteller (p. 46). He also mis-tells the story of Athena's birth (p.49). Hephaestus did not "attack" Zeus - he split his head open at the request of Zeus (he had a horrible headache and felt like something was trying to push out of his head). Literally, a splitting headache!

The Parthenon - the most famous ancient temple
in Athens, Greece

If Lord Elgin were alive today he could easily sue for libel (p.77). Lord Elgin rescued the art of the Parthenon in the 19th century by buying as much as he could - it was for sale on the open market - and sending it to London to be preserved. He "stole" them to save them, not because he was a thief but because the 19th century Greeks did not value their own heritage. If, on the other hand, he wanted to discuss why the British Museum does not return them to Athens, he would've had a better argument.

For reasons unknown he mostly skips over the Persian destruction of Athens and how the city re-built itself and instead gives a half-hearted history of the Peloponnesian War (Sparta vs. Athens).

The section on Rome struck me as neither great nor poor, which is a victory of sorts.

The London chapter assumes that the reader knows a lot about the struggle for religious liberty in Britain and Scotland and that one understands their Civil War - mighty big assumptions to make. As a result, it made for confusing reading for me (fairly well versed in the issues) and would be a mish-mash for most readers.

He also mis-attributes the George Bernard Shaw quote "England and America are two countries separated by a common language" to Winston Churchill. (p. 151)

The New York chapter is actually sort of bland, an anti-climax when compared to cities that had actual physical empires. He has a nice turn of phrase when he notes that when Dutch New Amsterdam became New York in 1664 "the first course of the American melting pot was served." (p. 158) However, we also have an inexplicable section on baseball (pages 168-171) that goes with nothing else in particular. There is not an over-arching sports theme in the book, just an orphan section on baseball...

Victor Davis Hanson (A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War) and Bernard Lewis (Islam: The Religion and the People), both fine authors and historians, are quoted extensively throughout the book, a fact that must be a source of professional embarrassment for both of them. Do yourself a favor, read Hanson and Lewis and skip this one entirely.

I rate this book 1 star out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Five Cities that Ruled the World.

Reviewed on December 22, 2009.

***EDIT August 9, 2020***
Please note: Today I came across information about other writings of Douglas Wilson that I am not comfortable with. He espouses a seriously warped view of American slavery and of women's rights. I do not endorse those views.

The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern by Victor Davis Hanson

Excellent Series of Essays

Victor Davis Hanson's The Father of Us All is an excellent series of essays about war - why we fight, how we fight, the compromises societies make with themselves as they fight, what causes some countries to keep fighting while others grow weary of it, what types of societies deal best with the stresses of war, the future of war and a look at the American way of waging war.

Many of these essays have been previously published (or substantial parts of them) in magazines but Hanson has re-worked and amplified them. I only recognized one essay and the new version was longer and more substantive.

Hanson is a brilliant essayist - he expands the reader's point of view without talking down to him. Instead, in plain language he discusses large ideas and, happily, he includes plenty of references to other authors and other books that he has found interesting and informative. Reading Hanson is liking talking to an old friend who not only informs, he also entertains and brings along a list of fascinating books, authors and topics and quotes for you to enjoy as well.

Victor Davis Hanson

His last essay, "How Western Wars Are Lost - and Won" is a fascinating look at the current war on terror. It builds on all of the other essays and frankly wonders if the West has what it takes to defend itself any longer: "We presently witness the absurd situation in which a lunatic Iranian regime uses it oil wealth to spin thousands of imported centrifuges to enrich uranium, while peaceful democratic Germany, where nuclear physics originate, could well be blackmailed by the threat of losing a Munich or Hamburg - despite its ability to build within a year thousands of fusion bombs as predictably lethal as a BMW or Mercedes is reliable." (p. 240)

A fascinating series of essays. Well worth your time.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern by Victor Davis Hanson.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on May 18, 2010.

Mexifornia: A State of Becoming by Victor Davis Hanson



Originally published in 2007.

Victor Davis Hanson's Mexifornia: A State of Becoming is one of the most thorough discussions about the topic of illegal immigration that I have read. Hanson is sympathetic to the plight of the aliens, is intimately familiar with the economic aspects that draw them to America (he owns a vineyard in the Fresno area) and he is witness to the changes and hidden costs that have come to California.

He discusses the issue from the point of view of the illegal alien, the employers that hire them, the taxpayers that subsidize them, the way we used to bring immigrants into the larger American culture, the way we do it (or don't do it) now. It is not an anti-immigrant rant, despite some of the comments you may read in the reviews.

I found this to be a fascinating read - It is much deeper than Geraldo Rivera's The Great Progression: How Hispanics Will Lead America to a New Era of Prosperity, a book that I've recently read that covers some of the same issues. However, we need more of these types of books that openly discuss the issue - books from all political and cultural perspectives that go beyond the screaming and posturing that cable news shows provide when they discuss the issues.

I rated this book 5 stars out of a possible 5.

Reviewed on June 10, 2010.

Note: I find myself continually disappointed that this talented historian has become such a shameless advocate for President Trump and the MAGA movement. He should see Trump for what he is because he has seen charlatans like Trump time after time throughout history, but somehow he does not. I imagine that his concerns about illegal immigration has led him to ignore everything else about the MAGA movement and its paranoia. This book has been updated. I have not read the update.
DWD. January 13, 2025.