Rating: 
Summary: provocative
Review: A reviewer below, who describes himself as a cognitive psychologist with an interest in classics, said that this book convinced him not to waste four years studying Greek just to understand the nuances lost in translation; programming languages and other applied fields are worthier of the student's time. I must applaud a cognitive psychologist for taking an interest in classics, but his view exemplifies the problem with our university education that the authors of WHO KILLED HOMER aim to attack in the first place. Being in the field of cognitive science myself, I am quite familiar with the simple-mindedness, not to say ignorance and arrogance, so common among its practitioners. The view expressed by our cognitive psychologist seems quite typical. Whether or not one should devote time to the study of Greek is a matter of choice; surely the student can decide for herself. But to say that it is not inherently worthwhile as programming languages is mistaken, and to say that people only study Greek due to cognitive dissonance is exceptionally stupid. (The very concept of cognitive dissonance is neither original nor helpful, perhaps useful for social psychologists for their problematic predictions but will disappear altogether from textbooks in about 50 yrs as a historical relic of the bad old days of psychology in its primitive phase.) How can our scientifically minded psychologist be so certain about the value of something he himself never studied? Perhaps the nuances lost in translation are the truly important ones; perhaps those with such faith in translation should not claim that they have understood the classics; perhaps Greek is not as difficult as the numbers (350 verb forms) would suggest. The truth is: the professional practioners and naive friends of classics cause more harm to the discipline than its true enemies. WHO KILLED HOMER? would be worth reading if only for this reason.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Thesis
Review: First. I have yet to read the book. This will be a quick response to some of the reviews. Undoubtedly our current civilization is founded on the basic ideas first expounded in Greek by Greeks. However, these ideas were profoundly influenced by admixture of ideas first expounded by Semites in Hebrew, and later by Arabs in Arabic. The original works have all been translated into modern languages many many times. No need to learn the languages to get the basic ideas, especially if you consult multiple sources. Second. The discipline required to learn Greek, Latin (and well, why not Sanskrit while we're at it) will produce a way of thinking that is much more likely to be organized, coherent, and thereby more influential. The discipline required to advance in mathematics will also produce this type of thinking in terms of organizing thought, but not necessarily in expressing those thoughts. Better to do math and language. Best still to do advanced math, using Russian texts, and really twitch and tweak the dendrons. Third, to sum, my father, a minister, once told me that any church to which I belonged was as good as any other. What mattered was my own dedication to that church, and the depth of my belief in its teachings. I love Greek, I love math, I am dismally inadequate in both fields, but find great joy in the pursuit anyway.
Rating:
Summary: The death of classics and classical education.
Review: Hanson and Heath describe in devastating detail the unfortunate turn to obscurity and irrelevance taken by the new generation of classics departments under the influence of postmodernist and radical leftist trends in the university. While similar problems afflict other areas in the liberal arts, the authors explain why it is particularly troubling in the case of classics, arguing passionately for the importance of understanding the ancient Greek and Roman heritage of Western civilization.
One cannot help but agree with their critique, as well as with the basic recommendation of restoring knowledge of the classics to the average university student; however, the authors go too far in advising that the entire university curriculum be restructured around the classics, including the learning of Greek and Latin.
Although Hanson and Heath are no doubt correct in insisting that the classics are best understood when read in their original languages, they can be understood well enough in translation. And while the authors are equally right that learning a difficult language like Greek helps one to develop a logical and disciplined mind, this objective would be accomplished as well through increased emphasis on mathematics, which would also have more practical dividends.
On the whole, a very interesting book, though somewhat over the top, readily recommended to anyone interested in the direction university education is going.
Rating: 
Summary: Elegy for Hellas
Review: Having majored in 'penniless student of Greek' in college I was surprised to read here that I was in what could be the last generation of this tradition. Although much of the diagnosis is open to debate, perhaps faulty on several points, the controversy has perhaps obscured the basically accurate point the authors seem to be making, that of the passage of a great tradition of learning. The author's indictment of the method of teaching certainly rings true. I arrived with a lot of advanced placement and my knowledge of classics peaked the first week of my freshman year as I ended in a permanent huff over pedantic Wilamowitz style philology and disappointed that that was all there was going to be. So university was at least an opportunity to educate myself in the Western tradition by ignoring the professors. Majoring in classics was a big risk, what a waste.
This is such a provocative and interesting book that one need not agree at all points to find it important reading. And it is strange and sad a high tech civilization seems both unaware and indifferent to the disappearance of this form of education. Part of the problem is that for all its science modern society has no coherent view of history and the authors attempt to rescue the study of Greece from faddish theory is convincing. Their 'utopian' proposal to remedy the university graduate scene is radical indeed, small wonder irate colleagues counterattacked.
This book raises questions beyond its basic thesis. We need a new type of university educational system, that's for sure.
Rating:
Summary: You will want to read the Iliad again.....
Review: It may seem that another reader�s review of this book is superfluous. The battle lines are clearly drawn. You either hate Hanson or you love him. When I say that I love him, I am simply saving those who hate him the trouble of reading further.But for those of you who are new to the debate, there may be some value in reading on. Victor Davis Hanson emerged on the scene in the early 1980s with a wonderful little book called �The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece�. This readable, engaging tome was taken up by, among others, John Keegan who embraced some of the ideas and began to publicise them. �Who Killed Homer� emerged much later. It is a brilliant polemic � a fact that is often missed by the critics who belabour Hanson with the charge of being too controversial � I think that was rather the point. Hanson wrote in despair and anger. He despaired of the state of education in our colleges and universities. And he has written an impassioned, polemical diatribe on the subject. As Stephen Ozment remarked, �this is a book for anyone who has loved or hated a college or university�. Like Bernard Knox who as a young man lashed out at the excessive technicality of classical studies (after reading an extended study in a classical journal entitled �The Carrot in Ancient Greece�), Hanson is incensed at the dearth of true learning at universities. He would have us go back to general principals. He would have professors stop publishing and start TEACHING. First and foremost, Hanson makes the case for Greek civilisation. However we get our Greek, he would say, we must get it. Western Culture, he says, is largely founded on Greek ideas, filtered through intervening civilisations and systems of thought. I despair of the school curriculum I see these days. My young nephews are offered, through something called �social studies�, the fleeting opportunity in Grade 4 and 5 to learn about ancient cultures. The problem is that it is left to the teacher to decide WHICH cultures they study. It is entirely possible for students in Ontario to go through school without EVER studying Greek or Roman history. And whatever benefits may be derived from the study of meso-american culture or Chinese culture, they pale beside the importance of those which can be obtained through a study of the Greeks. For the study of other cultures does not speak to the core values of western civilisation. The values which, transmitted down through the centuries to us from the Greeks, have made our culture (for the time being) the dominant culture in the world. Here is Hanson on the subject: �Yet as magnificent and accessible as the Odyssey is, the Iliad is the greater poem, the more difficult and important challenge to teachers of Greek, who, if they be teachers or Greek at all, must teach the Iliad and teach it frequently. Most subsequent Greek ideas � learning comes through pain, reason is checked by fate, men are social creatures, the truth only emerges through dissent and open criticism, human life is tragically short and therefore comes with obligations, characters is a matter of matching words with deeds, the most dangerous animal is the natural beast within us, religion is separate from and subordinate to political authority, private property should be immune from government coercion, even aristocratic leaders ignore the will of the assembly at their peril � start with Homer, especially the Iliad, but never again are they presented so honestly, and without either apology or elaboration.� And these Greek values, he maintains were UNIQUE in the world. Democracy, free speech, separation of church and state, a civilian army � these idea (and others) ALL began in Greece and nowhere else. And yet the general public in the west knows less about itss origins that EVER before. The dust jacket notes, ��the formal study of the origins of Western Culture is disappearing from American life at precisely the time when it is most needed to explain, guide and warn the public about both the wonders and dangers of their own culture.� What you will come away with from this book, if you have an open mind at all, is either a new (or perhaps renewed) appreciation for Greek culture. You will want to read the Iliad again and you will want your children to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Shrill and hyperbolic - whatever happened to Greek stoicism?
Review: Since the trial of Socrates, it is deemed fashionable in some circles to condemn intellectuals for the corruption of youth, an ancient tradition which Hanson and Heath proudly carry on in "Who killed Homer?". A quirky and polemic book designed for provocation, it really has more to tell us about contemporary American academia and political discourse than about ancient Greece. In short, the authors argue or rather insist that the classics are in demise at the American university, that this can be directly attributed to the incompetence and careerism of the present generation of professors, and that this decline is not merely an academic matter, but has dire cultural ramifications as well, as the wisdom of the Greeks "alone inaugurates the Western experience" and is essential for understanding contemporary society and values. First of, the blunt assertion that the classics are truly and irrevocably dying may baffle some teachers, who will tell you that they had more classics majors and undergrad enrollments than ever, at the time when "Who killed Homer?" was still in writing. In any case, Homer seems comfortably safer today than he was in, say, 410 AD when the Goths sacked Rome and Germanic tribes were streaming into the empire. Even if we concede this point for the sake of the argument, however, it remains doubtful if today's scholars, whom Hanson and Heath have singled out as the amoral defilers of tradition, are indeed alone to blame for the development. Rather, the problems they diagnose are things that afflict all the humanities, and the entire university, for that matter. And while some of it certainly is down to the lacking ethos of individual professors, a more impartial observation reveals that the failure lies at a higher level, the inability of the university as an institution to address its own changing situation. Real issues such as these - the social and economic pressures that shape the structures of our schools, the utilitarian or ill-defined goals with which present day students are imbued, and a contemporary culture which does not encourage the kind of meditative, in-depth learning that the study of ancient texts demands - require a serious and careful analysis that Hanson and Heath are unable or unwilling to provide. Instead, the authors assume that given enough ad hominem attacks and righteous anger, the ills of Western civilization will be cured. The tone is accusatory, shrill and dismissive throughout, which is fun to read, but not particularly endearing. Still, the best parts of "Who killed Homer?" are the hilarious quotes from contemporary essays and books, so high-flown and obtusely written that they are indeed ripe for parody. But while Hanson and Heath are justified in their lampooning of high theory and pretentious jargon, their own self-righteous meandering gets tedious just as fast, and the solutions they themselves offer are naïve at best. For example, the teaching methods they envision seem more suited to a teenaged audience than university students, who are supposed to begin to distance themselves from the subject of study and learn critical thinking. The notion of learning Latin and ancient Greek to actually "think like the Greeks" falls into the same adolescent vein (besides, whether one really leads to the other is debatable). But Hanson and Heath just love the Greeks and descend with the tempestuous fury of Poseidon upon those whom they perceive to defile that noble tradition: "multiculturalism", "postmodernism", "feminism", "political correctness" and all the other beloved spectres of the academic right. Before long, Hanson and Heath abandon their original subject in favour of a nebulous lamentation about contemporary moral decay, and it quickly becomes apparent that their real agenda is not merely the rescue of the classics, but rather more sweeping and political. So what about Homer, actually? After all, the main argument here is that the Greeks deserve a unique kind of attention as the central progenitors of Western civilization (indeed, "Greek" and "Western" are blended together in a rather curious and undefined mixture). True enough, Greco-Roman culture is certainly one of the cornerstones of our culture, the other being Christianity. Christianity the authors find "classical, unmistakably Western in spirit", it may come as a surprise to some. It is as if there was no "real" history after 400 AD, and as if the enormous influence that Puritanism and other modern schools of thought had in shaping American society simply did not exist. Hanson and Heath also seem unable to grasp that democracy has come a long way, and that some of the aspects of Greek society, like imperialism, slavery or the subordination of women, are hardly role-models for today. Surely it would be unfair to focus on these failings at the expense of the achievements, and the Greeks were still the most advanced civilization of their time. But the romanticized and olive-coloured picture which the authors paint here with broad, generalizing brushes, and their narrow and exclusive focus cross the line into revisionism. And even the most passionate Hellenophile most acknowledge that laws and customs which worked fine in small, Mediterranean city-states 2500 years ago are no patent solution for the complex challenges of the global, industrialized, information-age society of the 21st century. An inspiration, surely, and a vital tradition, among others - but not a blueprint. But that is what the authors take their beloved Greeks for. "Even the most vociferous academic critic of the West would prefer to fly Swissair [or] check into the Mayo Clinic" they argue, "rather than board a Congolese airliner [or] leave his appendix in Managua General... Why? The Greeks." Indeed, the industrial age, powered flight, airline security, modern surgical techniques - why not call it all "Greek"? Absurd and a little sad, for Hanson and Heath seem unable to celebrate Greek culture without downgrading all others, which stains their idyllic canvas. In the end, what started out as a seemingly noble cause degenerates not only into eyebrow-singeing assaults on their fellow academics, but into similarly chauvinistic Western triumphalism at large. So unnecessary, so avoidable, so tragic - and in that respect, so Greek.
Rating: 
Summary: Who, indeed?
Review: The authors of this book claim that the study of the classics (Greek and Roman) is dying, or already dead, in American universities. This may very well be true. But beyond that, I failed to get their point. First they argue that no other civilizations have anything better to offer for an explanation of the life we live today than the classical Western ideas of Greece and Rome. No argument there. That is why the West is dominant in the world and why others envy us and many wish to emulate us (or destroy us). One chapter quotes many books and articles by modern classicists. These quotations are laughable in their incomprehensibility. This, I believe, is the authors' point, and it is well taken. But so what? No one but other academic classicists could read this stuff, and they probably don't understand it either. They seem to believe that no professor of classics actually wants to teach but only to find ways to get time off (with pay) to write incomprehensible books and articles. The authors have a lot of spleen to vent in regard to the study and teaching of the classics, and they've vented it. I hope they feel better. They have my sympathy, but it's unlikely that their book will have any practical effect. They go on to say how difficult it is to learn Greek or Latin and that without visiting ancient sites and soaking up classical history, the student can't really "know" classics. It seems a lot of work for someone who just wants a college education to secure a better job. Most people can't afford to luxuriate in the classics for four years only to find themselves without a usable degree.
Rating:
Summary: The classics corrupted by materialist scholars
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Calling All Amateurs
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A shake-up for university education and "modern" thought
Review: This an excellently researched and written book which keeps the reader's interest strong from the beginning to the end. I come from an Economics background with a strong amateur interest in ancient greek history and mythology, but after reading this book my experience during the six years of studies in Canadian and American Universities came back to me to remind me of the problems and challenges facing higher academic education, which I had sensed back then(early 80's). I feel there is a common pathology in all academia in the west and the lack of proper classical training, from the early years, may account for that. The book offers an excellent account of the contribution of greek wisdom to western culture, and for modern Greeks (it has already been translated in modern Greek)it is also useful to see that they are not the only inheritors of ancient Greece, and rightly so, language and customs apart. In addition, the book answers accurately to the recent resurgence of the supposedly "afro-asiatic" roots of classical civilisation and gives the right perspective to the whole debate. This book should form a basis for a reexamination of university education and all education for that matter. By stressing our common western heritage, feeling proud of it, we can interact more fruitfully with the other traditions in the world. Cultural mix-ups do not offer solutions to problems facing the world today. The forces of ignorance, superstition and the irrational loom large. The world has benefited by the Greek spirit and should not discard it too easily, in view on new "millennia" promising ideas. The books has a very good section on recommended readings in ancient greek wisdom at the end.
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