Obama: The Dream and the Reality gathers a powerful selection of essays and commentaries by acclaimed historian and political analyst Victor Davis Hanson, first published in National Review. In this incisive collection, Hanson examines the presidency of Barack Obama with the clarity and rigor that have made him one of America’s most provocative and respected conservative voices.

Writing in his signature pungent, eloquent prose, Hanson cuts through the idealism and rhetoric that surrounded Obama’s rise to power, exploring the gap between the promise of his presidency and the realities of his policies and leadership. With the discerning eye of a historian steeped in the lessons of antiquity and human nature, Hanson analyzes how Obama’s vision of transformation collided with the enduring constraints of politics, economics, and culture.

Far more than a partisan critique, this volume reflects Hanson’s lifelong effort to understand how ideas, character, and circumstance shape the course of nations. Drawing on his wide-ranging knowledge of classical history and contemporary affairs, he places Obama’s presidency within the larger sweep of Western political tradition—probing what it reveals about modern America’s ideals, contradictions, and challenges.

Provocative, insightful, and deeply informed, Obama: The Dream and the Reality is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the complex legacy of the Obama years and the continuing debate over America’s identity and direction.

 

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ National Review Books
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 1, 2012
• Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 408 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 098476500X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0984765003
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.61 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.3 x 9 inches
• Condition: Used Very Good

United States Executive Government, Political Commentary & Opinion, United States History

About the Author

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished historian, classicist, and public intellectual whose work bridges the ancient and modern worlds. He serves as the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and is Professor Emeritus of Classics at California State University, Fresno. Renowned for his deep understanding of warfare, culture, and civilization, Hanson brings a historian’s precision and a classicist’s insight to contemporary debates about politics, society, and the endurance of Western values.

A recipient of the National Humanities Medal (2007) and the Bradley Prize (2008), Hanson has authored or edited more than seventeen influential books, including The Western Way of War, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks, Carnage and Culture, The Soul of Battle, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, and the historical novel The End of Sparta. His writings explore how ideas born in ancient Greece and Rome continue to shape the modern world’s understanding of freedom, conflict, and citizenship.

In addition to his academic and literary achievements, Hanson is a nationally syndicated columnist and frequent contributor to major publications such as National Review Online and The New Criterion. He lives and writes from his forty-acre family farm in Selma, California, where he was born in 1953—continuing a long tradition of scholars rooted in both the land and the life of the mind.