Military historian Victor Davis Hanson speaks with Peter Robinson as part of the Hoover Institution's interview series, Uncommon Knowledge.
Hanson discusses difficult issues facing the American military today: the war in Iraq, radical Islam and the prospects for military action against a nuclear-capable Iran.
Bio
Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and military historian, professor of classics, and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of more than a dozen and a half books. His most recent volumes are Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, which Dr. Hanson edited, and The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern, a volume of Dr. Hanson's own essays.
Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007, the Claremont Institute's Statesmanship Award at its annual Churchill Dinner, and the $250,000 Bradley prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in 2008.
Peter Robinson
Peter M. Robinson is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he writes about business and politics, edits the Hoover Institution's quarterly journal, the Hoover Digest, and hosts Hoover's television program, "Uncommon Knowledge."
Robinson is also the author of three books: How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life; It's My Party: A Republican's Messy Love Affair with the GOP; and the best-selling business book Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA.
(born May 22, 1930, Woodmere, Long Island, N.Y., U.S.—died Nov. 27, 1978, San Francisco, Calif.) U.S. political leader. After graduating from college, he served in the U.S. Navy and was discharged in 1955 (although Milk claimed that he was dishonourably discharged due to his homosexuality, military records do not support the allegation). He later settled in San Francisco and soon gained a following as a leader of the city's gay community. In 1977 he was elected to the city's Board of Supervisors, becoming one of the first openly gay elected officials in U.S. history. In 1978 Milk and the city's mayor, George Moscone (1929–78), were shot and killed in City Hall by Dan White, a conservative former city supervisor. At White's murder trial, his attorneys argued that his judgment had been impaired by eating junk food (a tactic later derided as the “Twinkie defense”); his conviction on the less serious charge of voluntary manslaughter sparked riots in the city. Milk was the subject of numerous books and movies, including the 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, which received an Academy Award, and Milk (2008), in which he was portrayed by Sean Penn.
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