Victor Davis Hanson proposes that the military superiority and global dominance of The West has been intimately linked to its faith in democracy and personal liberty. Rather than measuring the worth of the west through its cultural or literary accomplishments, Hanson engages with the much starker record of its successes in combat against non-western armies. In place of the Great Books, he studies the Great Battles and augments his bold thesis with some evocations of the intensity of warfare.