No one does ancient history better than Victor Davis Hanson.  I found his soon after 9/11 and loved his insights into human nature and the reflections of that nature afforded by a look throughout history, particularly military history.  I have read that Vice President Cheney has claimed that Hanson's views on the War on Terror reflect his own and for the most part they reflect mine. 

History never affords perfect analogies, but it can help one gain the needed perspective to make tough decisions.  Rarely do our politicians of today discuss ancient history like the Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian War, or the Punic Wars.  For the most part, I think today's students of history are much too inculcated with politically correct drivel to really gain the perspective that wrestling with real history offers.  Through real history we learn much of human nature, not utopian pipedreams, but reality, both warm and beneficient as well as cold and ruthless.

The first piece is a review of a collection of essays about the Persian Wars (which the recent flick 300 helped popularize by depicting the battle of Thermopylae).  The second is a review of Cullen Murhpy's "Are We Rome?", another in a long line or recent scholarship (or in this case pseudoscholarship) that purports to make the grand comparison of Rome and America.  Great reads and they should get one's appetite whetted for more.