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Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom Paperback – April 1, 2001

by Victor Davis Hanson (Author), John Heath (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 147 ratings
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With straightforward advice and informative readings of the great Greek texts, the authors show how we might still save classics and the Greeks for future generations. Who Killed Homer? is must reading for anyone who agrees that knowledge of classics acquaints us with the beauty and perils of our own culture.
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  1. Print length
    323 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Encounter Books
  4. Publication date
    April 1, 2001
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1893554260
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1893554269
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Encounter Books; First Edition (April 1, 2001)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 323 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1893554260
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1893554269
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.19 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 147 ratings

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  1. Victor Davis Hanson

    Victor Davis Hanson

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    Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in military history and classics at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno. He is the author of over two dozen books, including The Second World Wars, The Dying Citizen, and The End of Everything. He lives in Selma, California.

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  2. John Heath

    John Heath

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Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
147 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the content extensive and profound. They also say the book is worth reading for its withering indictment of the university.

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6 customers mention "Reading experience"6 positive0 negative

Customers find the book worth reading for its withering indictment of the university. They also say it's readable and engaging.

"...He is readable and engaging...." Read more

"...earth criticism and their fluent, accessible writing make this book a fun read as well as a compelling one." Read more

"...But "Who Killed Homer?" is still worthwhile reading for both its withering indictment of university practices and detailing of the cavalcade of rude..." Read more

"...imagination back to a day before 11 September, this is really a fun book to read." Read more

4 customers mention "Content"4 positive0 negative

Customers find the content extensive and profound. They also say the authors appear serious.

"...decade or more and I was always deeply impressed by his extensive and profound exegesis !..." Read more

"...But the authors appear quite serious, and given their intricate detailing of the university's suffering due to the loss of Greek wisdom they have..." Read more

"...I loved the logic and the topic. And all the irony they use against the self proclaimed hyper intelligencia is worth the read all by it self." Read more

"A book for specialists, but lucid and insightful for all..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

Timothy Michael Graham
5.0 out of 5 stars Came early. Seller cared about my service impressions.
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2024
Verified Purchase
V. D. Hanson is an imminent scholar and intellectual in the true classical sense. He is readable and engaging. I encourgae all to have familiarity with Greek thought so to better understand how the Western cannon was formulated and why its understanding is required.
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Dave (D.J.) Butler
5.0 out of 5 stars Calling All Amateurs
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2002
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The core of WKH? (as Hanson and Heath charmingly call their own book) is a savage indictment of university Classicists. The answer to the question "who killed Homer and why?" is classicists, and for filthy lucre. For money, career, fame and professional advancement, classicists have betrayed the Greeks by preferring academic heights to actual teaching, by turning Classical Greece into one more subject for multiculturalist, postmodernist, queer theorist, what-have-you studies, by ignoring the greatness and uniqueness of Greek culture and not caring what the Greeks actually have to say. The professors don't live like Greeks, they fail to match word and deed. So disinterested grad students (with their eyes firmly on the professorial heights) do all the actual teaching, and the students aren't coming anymore.
And Hanson and Heath confess that they don't believe that university Classics can be saved.
(Incidentally, the authors make it pretty clear that taking the Greeks seriously is antithetical -- and may be a good antidote -- to nonsensical multiculturalism. There is truth, there is virtue, and all things are not equal.)
Interestingly, this core is sandwiched between introductory chapters which set out the unique importance of the Greeks and also the history of Classical Studies, emphasizing the sometimes revolutionary contributions of amateur classicists and a closing chapter giving an introductory syllabus and commentary to aspiring amateur classicists, ten books by Greeks and ten books about Greeks. Hanson and Heath say they hope for another Homer, but they seem to be sending out a homing beacon to another Schliemann, Parry or Ventris.
Good for them. Their devastating scorched earth criticism and their fluent, accessible writing make this book a fun read as well as a compelling one.
133 people found this helpful
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Amazon Reader
5.0 out of 5 stars A Book for Eternity
Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2023
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I am reading Professor Hansson’s books for a decade or more and I was always deeply impressed by his extensive and profound exegesis !
Finishing one of the most recently published of his books, I was curious about the “old” ones.
And what a revelation! I grew up in the Greek cultural soup being educated in Europe, but this book opens profound views about how it was and where we are now! I cannot refrain myself to recommend the book with an unlimited enthusiasm! A real book for Eternity.
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George Sloan
5.0 out of 5 stars The Same people who Killed Homer are the same people killing Chrsit
Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2011
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After many years of teaching and then reading "Who Killed Homer' it is easy to see how the bible and God's Word is defiled. The bible has been added to for hundreds of years and the verses have be rewritten to say what the church corporate business interest desire. The poeple in the churches and bible studies are being taught stuff that is being passed through men filtering God's word of any truth. What passes through the churches is the stuff of Fantasy Christianity. In the sciences, mathmatics, law and busieness such stuff as "Who Killed Homer" could never happen. They have standards that cause the student to profit. The same sort of lazy people have sunk "Who Killed Homer". Lazy places attract the lazy. The money is too good to pass up. Christianity has been long ago poured as concrete. It can't be changed. The lies are built in for money. They don't need to learn any more. They don't need to get paid any more for what they do. They get paid too much as it is considering what little truth escapes. Seminaries have to be a joke to those who run them. God is used as a bean bag to play other games. Truth has no place in Fantasy Christianity. Surely the Pew Warmers have no idea what the bible says. Fantasy Christisnity has been around since the Greek Constantine' enthusiastic mother. The last honest man was Augustine and then Roman Catholicism died and it continues to die a slow death. However Fantassy Christianity wants to be just like Catholicism. "Who Killed Homer" is the format for who is killing Christ all the while they give God the Big Middle Finger. Unbelief is giving God the Big Middle Finger. There is no recourse to unbelief. Unfortunately Fantasy Christianity finds God a myth as do our famous Athiest. They show it every time they give God the Big Middle Finger. "Who Killed Homer: will open any eye who read it. It is for those who want to know how the world outside of the Sciences, Mathmatrics, law and Business does fail without standards. God is not good enough for Fantasy Christianity.
3 people found this helpful
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M. A. D'Virgilio
5.0 out of 5 stars The Greeks Aren't Dead After All
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2017
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The authors end on a glum note, and maybe are justified when looking at the wasteland of higher education, but since the 1990s Homer has been resurrected in K-12 classical education! In fact, that's one of the few things that gives me hope for the future of the American republic. Home schooling has grown tremendously, and mostly focuses on a classical approach, Christian classical schools are flourishing, and charter (public) classical schools are springing up all over the country. The latter is especially encouraging to me because there is no greater antidote for postmodern relativism than a classical education, and in classical charter schools kids are being taught that Truth and objective reality exists. You can't get more counter culture in our day.

As for the book, I learned a lot I never really knew about the Greek worldview, or had it put a new way that I found enlightening. I didn't quite realize how much the Greed and biblical worldview had in common, and how much we need both in our culturally sick age.
41 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Benni Chisholm
5.0 out of 5 stars The book is erudite and full of wisdom.
Reviewed in Canada on February 20, 2021
Verified Purchase
Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath point out that our constitutional government, free speech, separation of religion and politics, private property, civilian control of military, and free scientific inquiry originated with ancient Greeks. Greek writers themselves analyzed the good and bad of their systems. Classical education has much to teach us.
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Philologikos Krokodeilos
1.0 out of 5 stars Problematic, Flawed and Odd.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 6, 2013
Verified Purchase
Potentially, I might have agreed with the book in that its central thesis is plausible: That the practice of professional academics are in some way harming the Classics. I still think that, however this book is eminently terrible and the fact that so many people think otherwise really testifies how few people know anything about classical antiquity. I'll stick to just a few essential points.

1) We need to think like Greeks. WTF? I doubt any anthropologists would agree such a thing is possible OR desirable. What is funny though, is that Greek somehow = right wing 20th century American. Not only is this naive it's dependent entirely on selectively (mis)reading our sources. Can we know how Greeks thought? Well it's highly dependent on class, polis, period etc (as well as the usual constraints!) but it's a world apart from this book.

2) Casual racism. Apparently modern Greeks don't speak good Greek!? British people are subservient and conniving? and so on...

3) Plaintive wailing: So much of this book is dedicated to basically complaining about complexity, apparently people use big words (wah), and scholarship is too complex. No s***, when dealing with complex topics complexity naturally arises. Not everyone is happy to treat classical Greek as modern American and getting beneath the skin of another people is very, very, difficult and tentative.

4) Rants against Evidence/Privileging own Viewpoint: What's really odd is how he'll occasionally attack the extant literature. Callimachus is bookish, Menander trite, Polybius second rate. Now what makes this hilarious is that he'll then tell us to read Virgil, heavily influenced by Callimachus et al, or Tacitus (who needs Polybius) and so on. Worse, the first two of these were some of the most important authors for the Greeks AND Romans. This is indisputable. Are we to assume that the authors are more Greek or Roman than they were themselves?

Idiocies like these abound. I've picked what I think are the most striking even to the untrained but you could easily open any page and lift a dozen more. It is, seriously, a terrible book. Which is a shame since a good expose remains a desideratum...this just isn't it, not even close. Instead we have is something terribly confused and misinformed, pursued with the vehemence of the fanatical and the ignorant.
7 people found this helpful
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