Wednesday, September 07, 2016

Podcast Recommendation: The Classicist


When time has allowed, I've been binge listening to the Hoover Institute's "The Classicist" podcast.  It features interviews with classics scholar and military historian Victor Davis Hanson.  I read his Why the West Has Won and Bonfire of the Humanities (coauthored with John Heath and Bruce Thornton) over the last year and am working my way now through Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea, the memoir of his experiences on his family's multi-generational California raisin farm. Hanson can speak authoritatively about Thucydides, the Trojan War, and the Roman Republic and then sagaciously apply it to contemporary politics and culture. Good listening.

JTR
  

2 comments:

Josh Dermer said...

In my senior year of college, VDH spoke on campus and was generally well received. I have differences with him politically and on certain aspects of historical interpretation, but he's good on the classics. That seems to be his wheel house.

Jeffrey T. Riddle said...

Thanks for the comment Josh. OK, now I'm curious as to what your differences are with him politically and in his interpretation of history.