The Father of Us All

The Father of Us All is a 2010 book on the nature of war and the study of military history, written by Victor Davis Hanson, co-director of the Group on Military History and Contemporary Conflict, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. It is a collection of Hanson’s lectures and essays, adapted to book form.

He defines military history as "the investiation of why one side wins and another loses a war, and encompassing reflections on magisterial or foolish generalship, technological stagnation or breakthrough, and the role of discipline, bravery, national will and culture in deermining a conflict’s outcome and its consequences."

Military History: the Forgotten Discipline
Military history, in academia, receives little attention; academics, according to Hanson, spend little time in dealing with battle as an influencer of history. In the first chapter, he suggests that presenting the hypothesis, to a contemporary American college student, that either the Tet Offensive was a victory or was a defeat is most likely to garner the response “Who or what is Tet?”

He argues that the “nuclear pessimism of the Cold War”, following the horror of two world wars, reduced academic interest. “What did it matter whether Alexander the Great on the Indus or Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley offered lessons about both strategic and tactical doctrine if a volley of nuclear missiles could make all such calculations obsolete?” It is interesting to contrast his  assertion that nuclear weapons were truly that unique, given the number of times it was assumed that a weapons technology made war obsolete.

Raw, relevant history
The full title of the third chapter continues, “from the 300 Spartans to the History of Thucydides.”