Victor Davis Hanson has long been acclaimed as one of our leading scholars of ancient history. In recent years he has also become a trenchant voice on current affairs, bringing a historian's deep knowledge of past conflicts to bear on the crises of the present, from 9/11 to Iran. "War," he writes, "is an entirely human enterprise." Ideologies change, technologies develop, new strategies are invented-but human nature is constant across time and space. The dynamics of warfare in the present age still remain comprehensible to us through careful study of the past. Though many have called the War on Terror unprecedented, its contours would have been quite familiar to Themistocles of Athens or William Tecumseh Sherman. And as we face the menace of a bin Laden or a Kim Jong-Il, we can prepare ourselves with knowledge of how such challenges have been met before. The Father of Us All brings together much of Hanson's finest writing on war and society, both ancient and modern. The author has gathered a range of essays, and combined and revised them into a richly textured new work that explores such topics as how technology shapes warfare, what constitutes the "American way of war," and why even those who abhor war need to study military history. "War is the father and king of us all," Heraclitus wrote in ancient Greece. And as Victor Davis Hanson shows, it is no less so today.

Is there anything in the New Testament about the need for priests in the Church? Many Protestants would argue no. And if you point out that there is a priesthood in the Old Testament, they are likely to say it was a feature of the Old Covenant that was undone by Christ. How should a Catholic respond? In Jesus and the Old Testament Roots of the Priesthood, biblical scholar John Bergsma convinces readers that Jesus did, in fact, intend for a ministerial priesthood to be a key feature of the New Covenant. Bergsma shows how the priesthood is a major thread holding together the biblical story line—beginning with Adam’s loss of the gift of priesthood in the Fall and the long process of restoring his descendants to a priestly status over the centuries, culminating with Christ. With chapter summaries and discussion questions included, Jesus and the Old Testament Roots of the Priesthood can readily be adapted into a four-part study for personal or small group use.

Moving portraits of five commanders whose dynamic leadership styles changed the course of warfare and history trace the stories of Themistocles, Belisarius, William Tecumseh Sherman, Matthew Ridgway and David Petraeus, evaluating their pivotal military roles and the controversies that marked their careers.

The author describes his journey to Vietnam with his war veteran father, offering a glimpse of a land that had shaped both of their lives while reflecting on his father's war experience and the war's continuing political, cultural, and personal influence.

The quest of a young man, thousands of years ago, reveals the true origin of the Biblical story about Adam and Eve.