Victor Davis Hanson. (2013). The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost--From Ancient Greece to Iraq. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Victor Davis Hanson. 2013. The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost--From Ancient Greece to Iraq. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Victor Davis Hanson, The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost--From Ancient Greece to Iraq. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013.

Victor Davis Hanson. The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost--From Ancient Greece to Iraq. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013.

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The Savior Generals

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1. • value: ancient rome
2. • value: Ancient Greece
3. • value: Military Strategy
4. • value: Civil War
5. • value: Korean War
6. • value: Vietnam War
7. • value: Leadership
8. • value: Iraq War
9. • value: Roman warfare
10. • value: military leadership
11. • value: military command
12. • value: Leadership Studies
13. • value: Roman battles

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Hanson, Victor Davis
   • bioText: 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.
   • name: Victor Davis Hanson

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2013-05-14T00:00:00-04:00

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The Savior Generals

fullDescription

Stirring portraits of five commanders whose dynamic leadership changed the course of war and history by prominent military historian Victor Davis Hanson.

"Victor Davis Hanson has written another outstanding and eye-opening book"—The Washington Examiner
Leading military historian Victor Davis Hanson returns to non-fiction in The Savior Generals, a set of brilliantly executed pocket biographies of five generals who single-handedly saved their nations from defeat in war. War is rarely a predictable enterprise—it is a mess of luck, chance, and incalculable variables. Today's sure winner can easily become tomorrow's doomed loser. Sudden, sharp changes in fortune can reverse the course of war.
These intractable circumstances are sometimes mastered by leaders of genius—asked at the eleventh hour to save a hopeless conflict, created by others, often unpopular with politics and the public.
These savior generals often come from outside the established power structure, employ radical strategies, and flame out quickly. Their careers often end in controversy. But their dramatic feats of leadership are vital slices of history—not merely as stirring military narrative, but as lessons on the dynamic nature of consensus, leadership, and destiny.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Washington Examiner
   • content: It is not really news that Victor Davis Hanson has written another outstanding and eye-opening book. He has done that before and repeatedly, on a variety of subjects.
2. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus Reviews
   • content: An instructive series of portraits of five military outsiders called in to turn defeat into victory.
3. • premium: False
   • source: William Shawcross on THE FATHER OF US ALL
   • content: I have never read another book which explains so well the truth that 'war lies in the dark hearts of us all' but that history offers hope
4. • premium: False
   • source: Max Boot on THE FATHER OF US ALL
   • content: Few writers cover both current events and history—and none with the brilliance and erudition of Victor Davis Hanson....
5. • premium: False
   • source: Christopher Hitchens on THE WESTERN WAY OF WAR
   • content: Enthralling ... One closes this book wishing that its final verdict was as well known as more familiar tenets of Greek wisdom.
6. • premium: False
   • source: NYTBR on CARNAGE AND CULTURE
   • content: Vivid . . . ambitious . . . Challenges readers to broaden their horizons and examine their assumptions. . . . [Hanson] more than makes his case.
7. • premium: False
   • source: Washington Post on A WAR LIKE NO OTHER
   • content: Hanson performs the difficult feat of not talking down to readers while still presuming no prior knowledge of the war.
8. • premium: False
   • source: Wall Street Journal
   • content: Mr. Hanson's fluency with a broad range of historical epochs, which has made him one of his generation's most notable historians, is on full display in The Savior Generals.
9. • premium: False
   • source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
   • content: Provides widely applicable insight regarding the dynamics of leadership and consensus, and how those dynamics can change the destiny of nations.
10. • premium: False
    • source: The Baltimore Sun
    • content: An engaging book in which the action on the battlefield is placed within a larger perspective of the politics and the societies that go to war, and the qualities of the generals who fight those battles.
11. • premium: False
    • source: DeseretNews.com
    • content: Hanson's penetrating insights into each of the generals and the wars they fought will both astound and educate and leave the reader with a deep appreciation for the manifold difficulties of command in any era. Simply put, this is an excellent work from start to finish. With 'The Savior Generals,' Hanson has once again proven why he is one of America's foremost military historians.
12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 25, 2013
      Hanson (Makers of Ancient Strategy) begins with a deceptively simple question: “How are wars won or lost?” He cites familiar answers—technology, numbers, contingency—but he asserts that in desperate situations, human leadership still matters. To make his case, Hanson profiles five “savior generals” drawn from 2,500 years of conflict. Themistocles’s leadership was “multifaceted,” his career checkered; but his foresight preserved Greek freedom and its concepts of democracy, rationalism, and individual rights. Belisarius served a Byzantium on the edge of collapse, and established a strategic blueprint that for nearly a millennium held Western advances at bay. Sherman’s 1864 campaign was a masterpiece of “planning and organization” in service of a war whose success ensured Lincoln’s reelection and preserved the Union. Matthew Ridgway took over an unstable army and in 100 days saved South Korea and left an “indelible impression” on China regarding the risks of military confrontation with the U.S. Finally, David Petraeus designed and masterminded a “surge” that “saved a war deemed lost by almost everyone around him.” Hanson accurately describes these men as a “rare breed” of “mavericks and loners.” From Athens to Iraq, they seized their moments and reshaped history. Agent: Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu, Writers Representatives, LLC.

13. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 15, 2013
      An instructive series of portraits of five military outsiders called in to turn defeat into victory. Admittedly arbitrary, pro-Western and biased toward fighters of the "good" wars, these minibiographies by accomplished military historian Hanson (Obama: The Dream and the Reality, 2012, etc.) jump rather jarringly from the ancient world (Themistocles at Salamis 480 B.C.) to the American Civil War (William Tecumseh Sherman marching on Atlanta), without much in between. In all of the struggles, Hanson spotlights the unglamorous backgrounds of these generals, called in when the more upper-echelon leaders had failed; they were able to inspire the rank and file, think "outside of the box" and display unusual cool-headed mettle. Moreover, in retirement, they were often misunderstood, ill-appreciated and even abused. Hanson calls them "fireman," leaders "asked to extinguish the conflagration that others, of typically superior rank and prestige, have ignited." For example, in the panic to abandon Athens to the invading Persian King Xerxes, the Athenian lowborn general Themistocles stood like Charles de Gaulle against the invading Germans, as the author compares him, without any legitimacy but fighting words and a cunning plan to make a stand at Salamis despite an overwhelming Persian naval force. In 100 days, Matthew Ridgway, called into Korea in December 1950 after the sudden death of Gen. Walton Walker, turned around the defeatist mentality of the American troops, securing Seoul from the Chinese and North Koreans, restoring the 38th Parallel and convincing his bosses not to penetrate further into Korea. Gen. David Petraeus, too, was able to take a losing scenario in Iraq and employ a counterinsurgency success. However, resentment often hounded the generals in later years. A highly selective chronicle of elaborate eleventh-hour heroics by unconventional thinkers and men of action.

      COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

popularity

147

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shortDescription

Stirring portraits of five commanders whose dynamic leadership changed the course of war and history by prominent military historian Victor Davis Hanson.

"Victor Davis Hanson has written another outstanding and eye-opening book"—The Washington Examiner
Leading military historian Victor Davis Hanson returns to non-fiction in The Savior Generals, a set of brilliantly executed pocket biographies of five generals who single-handedly saved their nations from defeat in war. War is rarely a predictable enterprise—it is a mess of luck, chance, and incalculable variables. Today's sure winner can easily become tomorrow's doomed loser. Sudden, sharp changes in fortune can reverse the course of war.
These intractable circumstances are sometimes mastered by leaders of genius—asked at the eleventh hour to save a hopeless conflict, created by others, often unpopular with politics and the public.
These savior generals...

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