About the Author

Victor Davis Hanson has written or edited numerous books, including The Western Way of War, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks, The Soul of Battle, Carnage and Culture, and Ripples of Battle. He is also the author of two bestselling collections of essays: An Autumn of War and Between War and Peace. He is director emeritus of the classics program at California State University, Fresno, and currently a classicist and military historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has been a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, an Onassis fellow in Greece, Shifrin Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, and a recipient of the Eric Brendel Memorial Award for journalism. He lives and works with his wife and three children on their forty-acre tree and vine farm near Selma, California, where he was born in 1953.

Reviews

“The age of Pericles was also a time of famine, pestilence and atrocity: a ‘Thirty Year Slaughter.’ In order to understand the lesson this offers for civilization, one must try to feel it as the Greeks felt it, and reflect it as they did. In this dual task, Victor Davis Hanson once again demonstrates that his qualifications are unrivalled.”
–Christopher Hitchens, author of Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

“This book will immediately become the standard companion volume in English to Thucydides’ Peloponnesian Wars. Its own battle narratives are unexcelled; but its singular merit is its comprehensive and detailed description of how the actual fighting was done, how generals led, and why each side–Sparta and Athens–went to war. The author is a man of action and a practicing farmer as well as the premier classical historian and military commentator of our day.”
–Josiah Bunting III, author of Ulysses S. Grant

“The Peloponnesian War was grand and tragic but the sheer misery of those who experienced it has often been overlooked–until now. From death by trampling to cannibalism, from preteen-sized knights on ponies to deformed and ghostly plague survivors, from elegant galleys to bloodbaths in waterlogged death traps, the dark cones of classical combat are all brought to light by Hanson. This is a groundbreaking book by a great historian.”
–Barry Strauss, author of The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece–and Western Civilization

"The age of Pericles was also a time of famine, pestilence and atrocity: a 'Thirty Year Slaughter.' In order to understand the lesson this offers for civilization, one must try to feel it as the Greeks felt it, and reflect it as they did. In this dual task, Victor Davis Hanson once again demonstrates that his qualifications are unrivalled."
-Christopher Hitchens, author of Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

"This book will immediately become the standard companion volume in English to Thucydides' Peloponnesian Wars. Its own battle narratives are unexcelled; but its singular merit is its comprehensive and detailed description of how the actual fighting was done, how generals led, and why each side-Sparta and Athens-went to war. The author is a man of action and a practicing farmer as well as the premier classical historian and military commentator of our day."
-Josiah Bunting III, author of Ulysses S. Grant

"The Peloponnesian War was grand and tragic but the sheer misery of those who experienced it has often been overlooked-until now. From death by trampling to cannibalism, from preteen-sized knights on ponies to deformed and ghostly plague survivors, from elegant galleys to bloodbaths in waterlogged death traps, the dark cones of classical combat are all brought to light by Hanson. This is a groundbreaking book by a great historian."
-Barry Strauss, author of The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece-and Western Civilization