The western way of war

In this book, Victor Davis Hanson explores how the Greeks of the fifth century B.C.

invented the central act of Western warfare—the decisive infantry battle.

Instead of ambushes, skirmishes, or combat between individual heroes, the Greeks devised a ferocious, brief, and destructive head-on clash between armed men of all ages.

Hanson links this new style of fighting to the rise of constitutional government, raising new issues and questioning old assumptions about the history of war.

The book addresses recent scholarship on Greek warfare and examines the cultural, technological, and societal factors that contributed to Western battlefield superiority.