Table of Contents

List of Maps
Preface

CHAPTER ONE
Why the West Has Won

Enlightened Thugs · The Primacy of Battle · Ideas of the West ·The Western Way of War

PART ONE · CREATION

CHAPTER TWO
Freedom—or “To Live as You Please” · Salamis, September 28, 480 B.C.

The Drowned · The Achaemenids and Freedom ·The Persian Wars and the Strategy of Salamis · The Battle ·Eleutheria · The Legacy of Salamis

CHAPTER THREE
Decisive Battle · Gaugamela, October 1, 331 B.C.

Angles of Vision · The Macedonian Military Machine · Killing Spree · Decisive Battle and Western Warfare

CHAPTER FOUR
Citizen Soldiers · Cannae, August 2, 216 B.C.

A Summer Slaughter · Hannibal’s Jaws · Carthage and the West · Legions of Rome · The Idea of a Nation-in-Arms ·“Rulers of the Entire World”—the Legacy of Civic Militarism

PART TWO · CONTINUITY

CHAPTER FIVE
Landed Infantry · Poitiers, October 11, 732

Horse Versus Foot · The Wall · The Hammer · Islam Ascendant ·Dark Ages? · Infantry, Property, and Citizenship · Poitiers and Beyond

CHAPTER SIX
Technology and the Wages of Reason · Tenochtitlán, June 24, 1520–August 13, 1521

The Battles for Mexico City · Aztec War · The Mind of the Conquistadors · Spanish Rationalism · Why Did the Castilians Win? · Reason and War

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Market—or Capitalism Kills · Lepanto, October 7, 1571

Galley War · Legends of Lepanto · Europe and the Ottomans · Capitalism, the Ottoman Economy, and Islam · War and the Market

PART THREE · CONTROL

CHAPTER EIGHT
Discipline—or Warriors Are Not Always Soldiers · Rorke’s Drift, January 22–23, 1879

Killing Fields · The Imperial Way · Zulu Power and Impotence · Courage Is Not Necessarily Discipline

CHAPTER NINE
Individualism · Midway, June 4–8, 1942

Floating Infernos · The Annihilation of the Devastators ·The Imperial Fleet Moves Out · Western and Non-Western Japan ·Spontaneity and Individual Initiative at Midway · Individualism in Western Warfare

CHAPTER TEN
Dissent and Self-Critique · Tet, January 31–April 6, 1968

Battles Against the Cities · Victory as Defeat · Aftermath · War amid Audit, Scrutiny, and Self-Critique

EPILOGUE
Western Warfare—Past and Future

The Hellenic Legacy · Other Battles? ·The Singularity of Western Military Culture · The Continuity of Western Lethality ·The West Versus the West?

AFTERWORD
Carnage and Culture
after September 11, 2001

GLOSSARY
FOR FURTHER READING
INDEX

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 Ripples of Battle, 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.

Reviews

“Vivid . . . ambitious . . . Challenges readers to broaden their horizons and examine their assumptions. . . . [Hanson] more than makes his case.”--The New York Times Book Review

“No one offers a more compelling picture of how wars reflect and affect the societies, including our own, that wage them.” —National Review

“Hanson . . . is becoming one of the best-known historians in America . . . [Carnage and Culture] can only enhance his reputation.” —John Keegan, Daily Telegraph (London)

“Victor Davis Hanson is courting controversy again with another highly readable, lucid work. Together with John Keegan, he is our most interesting historian of war.” —Jean Bethke Elshtain, author of Women and War