Victor Hanson was a full-time farmer before joining California State University, Fresno, in 1984 to initiate a classics program. In 1991 he was awarded an American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award, which is given yearly to the country’s top undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin.

Hanson was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992–93), a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991–92), a recipient of the Eric Breindel Award for opinion journalism (2002), and an Alexander Onassis Fellow (2001) and was named alumnus of the year of the University of California, Santa Cruz (2002). He was also the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland (2002–3).

He is the author of some 170 articles, book reviews, and newspaper editorials on Greek, agrarian, and military history and essays on contemporary culture. He has written or edited thirteen books, including Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece (1983; paperback ed. University of California Press, 1998); The Western Way of War (Alfred Knopf, 1989; 2d paperback ed. University of California Press, 2000); Hoplites: The Ancient Greek Battle Experience (Routledge, 1991; paperback ed. 1992); The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization (Free Press, 1995; 2d paperback ed. University of California Press, 2000); Fields without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea (Free Press, 1996; paperback ed. Touchstone, 1997); The Land Was Everything: Letters from an American Farmer (Free Press, 2000); The Wars of the Ancient Greeks (Cassell, 1999; paperback ed., 2001); The Soul of Battle (Free Press, 1999, paperback ed. Anchor/ Vintage, 2000); Carnage and Culture (Doubleday, 2001; Anchor/Vintage, 2002); An Autumn of War (Anchor/Vintage, 2002); and Mexifornia: A State of Becoming (Encounter, 2003), Ripples of Battle (2003).

Hanson coauthored, with John Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (Free Press, 1998; paperback ed. Encounter Press, 2000) and, with Bruce Thornton and John Heath, Bonfire of the Humanities (ISI Books, 2001).

Hanson has written essays, editorials, and reviews for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, the New York Post, the Claremont Review of Books, The New Republic, National Review, American Heritage, Policy Review, Commentary, National Review, the Wilson Quarterly, the Weekly Standard, Daily Telegraph, and Washington Times and has been interviewed often on National Public Radio, the PBS Newshour, and C-Span’s BookTV. He is a weekly columnist for the National Review Online and serves on the editorial board of Arion, the Military History Quarterly, and City Journal.

Hanson was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz (B.A. 1975), the American School of Classical Studies (1978–79) and received his Ph.D. in classics from Stanford University in 1980.

He lives and works with his family on their forty-acre tree and vine farm near Selma, California, where he was born in 1953.