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A War Like No Other by Victor Davis Hanson
- Abstract
Victor Davis Hanson, who does not mince words, once introduced himself to me as the most hated man in the classics profession. I figured he must be exaggerating, but he wasn’t. Classicists detest Hanson for Who Killed Homer? (1998), his blistering critique of their faddishness and irrelevance. Proclaiming himself an academic populist, Hanson believes that the Greek classics can and should matter to ordinary people. A War Like No Other is his latest effort to make them matter.
As readers of Commentary know, Hanson is also a military historian, which helps account for his meteoric rise as a commentator since 9/11. Military historians lack status in the academy because professors, who live in a world of talk, do not like to admit how often things in the broader world are settled by force or the threat of it. But the public snaps up military history, and the prolific Hanson knows how to write for it.
About the Author
Clifford Orwin is professor of political science and director of the program in political philosophy and foreign affairs at the University of Toronto.
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