In the video above, Hoover fellow and author Victor Davis Hanson discusses his book The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost–from Ancient Greece to Iraq. Hanson notes that savior generals are eccentrics, iconoclasts, and visionaries who see things others do not. A great general peels the veneer of invulnerability from a winning enemy, convincing his own men that victory is entirely within their purview.
The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost–from Ancient Greece to Iraq offers 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
Prominent military historian Victor Davis Hanson explores the nature of leadership with his usual depth and vivid prose in The Savior Generals, a set of brilliantly executed pocket biographies of five generals (Themistocles, Belisarius, William Tecumseh Sherman, Matthew Ridgway, and David Petraeus) 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, one created by others and frequently unpopular politically and with the public. The savior generals often come from outside the established power structure, employ radical strategies, and flame out quickly. Their careers regularly 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.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“An instructive series of portraits of five military outsiders called in to turn defeat into victory.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“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.” ―The Washington Examiner
“Students of military leadership will be intrigued by Hanson’s astute set of cases.” ―Booklist
“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.” ―Wall Street Journal, Mark Moyar
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. His many books include the acclaimed The Father of Us All, A War Like No Other, The Western Way of War, Carnage and Culture, and Ripples of Battle.
