Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think - Softcover

Hanson, Victor Davis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385721943 ISBN 13: 9780385721943

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2004

Synopsis

The effects of war refuse to remain local: they persist through the centuries, sometimes in unlikely ways far removed from the military arena. In Ripples of Battle, the acclaimed historian Victor Davis Hanson weaves wide-ranging military and cultural history with his unparalleled gift for battle narrative as he illuminates the centrality of war in the human experience.

The Athenian defeat at Delium in 424 BC brought tactical innovations to infantry fighting; it also assured the influence of the philosophy of Socrates, who fought well in the battle. Nearly twenty-three hundred years later, the carnage at Shiloh and the death of the brilliant Southern strategist Albert Sidney Johnson inspired a sense of fateful tragedy that would endure and stymie Southern culture for decades. The Northern victory would also bolster the reputation of William Tecumseh Sherman, and inspire Lew Wallace to pen the classic Ben Hur. And, perhaps most resonant for our time, the agony of Okinawa spurred the Japanese toward state-sanctioned suicide missions, a tactic so uncompromising and subversive, it haunts our view of non-Western combatants to this day.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“Like any good classicist, Victor Davis Hanson accepts the primacy of military history in human affairs. In 'Ripples of Battle,' a sequel of sorts to his masterful 'Carnage and Culture,' he shows the fascinating repercussions of three lesser-known battles. You cannot fully understand Hiroshima, the bitterness of the Old South, or the Golden Age of Athens without reading this gem of a book.”
--Robert D. Kaplan
"Victor Davis Hanson is one of our leading military historians, and in 'Ripples of Battle' he does not disappoint. A far-reaching story of man, war, and history, it is, by turns, iconoclastic, touching, deeply learned, and endlessly fascinating. This slim book is a grand study."
--Jay Winik, author of April 1865: The Month That Saved America

“Victor Davis Hanson has earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the most interesting and innovative military historians in the world. In 'Ripples of Battle,' he shows once again why he’s the best. He ranges far and wide, from World War II to the wars of ancient Greece. Along the way he combines a born storyteller’s gift for rip-roaring battle narrative with a scholar’s attention to the deeper meaning of conflict. Once again he manages to take what may seem familiar and to show it in an utterly new light. The “ripples” that he identifies–which include characters as disparate as Socrates and the author of Ben Hur–astonish and delight. This book is not only deeply enlightening but also a sheer pleasure to read. It is, in short, vintage Victor.”
--Max Boot, Olin senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power

About the Author:

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture. He is the author of The Soul of Battle, An Autumn of War, and Carnage and Culture, all published by Anchor Books. His most recent book is The Savior Generals (Bloomsbury 2013). Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007, the Bradley Prize in 2008, as well as the William F. Buckley Prize (2015), the Claremont Institute’s Statesmanship Award (2006), and the Eric Breindel Award for opinion journalism (2002). He divides his time between his farm in Selma, CA, where he was born in 1953, and the Stanford campus.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0385721943
• ISBN 13: 9780385721943
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304