Barry Strauss

Professor of History, Professor of Classics
Department Chair

Office: 440/324 McGraw Hall
Phone: (607) 255-6743
Fax: (607) 255-0469
E-Mail: bss4@cornell.edu
Personal Web Site

Office hours: T 2:00-4:00

Research and Teaching Interests

Ancient history and military history are my two major interests. Within the ancient world, Greece is my focus with Rome a close second. As a military historian, my main interests are battle and strategy; I work on naval history as well. I have comparative interests in modern military history and in East Asian (especially Korean) history.

Barry Strauss's latest is The Spartacus War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), about which Publishers Weekly writes, No one presents the military history of the ancient world with greater insight and panache than Strauss...[A] brisk, engrossing account. Barry is blogging about the book at www.barrystrauss.com/blog/.

My most recent books are The Trojan War: A New History (2006) and The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter that Saved Greece – and Western Civilization (2004), which the Washington Post named as one of the best books of the year. Between them, these books have been translated into six foreign languages. My other books are: Athens After the Peloponnesian War: Class, Faction and Policy 403-386 B.C. (1987); Fathers and Sons in Athens (1993); The Anatomy of Error: The Lessons of Ancient Military Disasters for Modern Strategists, with Josiah Ober (1990); Hegemonic Rivalry from Thucydides to the Nuclear Age, edited with R. Ned Lebow (1991); War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War, edited with David McCann (2001). I am one of a team of six authors of Western Civilization: Beyond Boundaries, (Houghton Mifflin, 5th edition 2007).

I am an avid rower. In 1999 I published, Rowing Against the Current: On Learning to Scull at Forty.
I have appeared in more than a dozen television documentaries. I have published op-ed pieces in the Washington Post, L.A. Times, and Newsday, been interviewed on NPR and the BBC, and have been quoted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and in other major newspapers.

I am editor of The Princeton History of the Ancient World, a series of books from Princeton University Press. I sit on the editorial boards of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society, and The International Journal of the Classical Tradition.

I regularly teach introductory courses in ancient Greek history and in ancient warfare. My 2008 teaching is: History 363, History of Battle (taught with E. Baptist); History 667, Spartacus; History 2321, Introduction to Military History; History 7090, Introduction to the Graduate Study of Military History (taught with P. Hyams). I plan to teach Ancient Greece from Homer to Alexander again in fall 2009.

Educated in History at Cornell (B.A. ‘74) and Yale (Ph.D. ‘79), I studied archaeology at the American School at Athens as Heinrich Schliemann Fellow (1978-79). I also hold fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the Korea Foundation. I received Cornell’s Clark Distinguished Teaching Award.

Courses

Fall 2009:	6411	Fourth-Century & Early Hellenistic History of Greece

Education

Ph.D. Yale University, 1979
M.A. Yale University, 1976
B.A. Cornell University, 1974

Recent Publications and Awards

Books

The Spartacus War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009).

The Trojan War, A New History, Hutchinson/Random House, UK, 2007.

The Trojan War, A New History, Simon & Schuster, USA, 2006; translations forthcoming in Italian and Spanish; History Book Club, main selection.

Western Civilization: Beyond Boundaries, co-author (Houghton Mifflin). Fifth edition, 2008 [available December 2006]. (First-Fourth editions, entitled Western Civilization: The Continuing Experiment, 1994-2005.)

The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Ancient Greece - and Western Civilization (Simon & Schuster, USA, 2004, paperback 2005); Salamis, The Greatest Naval Battle of the Ancient World, 480 BC (Hutchinson/Random House UK, 2004, paperback 2005). Translations in Greek, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, 2005-2006.

War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War. Co-edited with David McCann. (M.E. Sharpe, 2001).

Salamis: The Navel Battle That Saved Ancient Greece – and Western Civilization (Simon & Schuster, USA, 2004; Hutchinson/Random House UK, 2004; translations into Greek and Portuguese forthcoming).

Western Civilization: The Continuing Experiment, co-author (Houghton Mifflin). Fourth Edition. 2004.

War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War. Co-edited with David McCann. (M.E. Sharpe), 2001.

Articles and Chapters

“Why Troy is Still Burning,” Historically Speaking, The Bulletin of the Historical Society. Volume VII/Number 6 (September/October, 2006).

“The Black Phalanx: African-Americans and the Classics After the Civil War,” Arion 12.3 (Winter 2005): 39-64.

“The Agony of War Under Oars,” Naval History 19.1 (February 2005): 39-42.

“The Scholar and Teacher,” Humanities, The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities 26.3 (May/June 2005): 8-13.

“The Rebirth of Narrative,” Historically Speaking 6.6 (July/August 2005): 1-5.

“Korea’s Legendary Admiral,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 17.4 (Summer 2005): 52-61.

“In the Shadow of the Fortress,” in Toivo Koivukoski & David Tabachnick, eds. Confronting Tyranny: Ancient Lessons for Global Politics. Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, 233-241.

“On Public Speech in a Democratic Republic at War.” In Republicanism: History, Theory, and Practice, a special issue of the CRISPP (Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy) 6.1 (Spring 2003): 22-37. Also published as Daniel Weinstock and Christian Nadeau, eds. Republicanism: History, Theory and Practice (Frank Cass, 2004), 22-37.

“The Dead of Arginusae and the Debate About the Athenian Navy” [in modern Greek translation as well as in English] Nautiki Epithewrisi 545.160s (Jan-Feb 2004): 40-67.

“Flames Over Athens,” Arion 12.1 (Spring/Summer 2004): 101-116.

“Go Tell the Spartans,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 17.1 (Autumn 2004): 16-25.

“Faith for the Flight,” Arion 11.3 (Winter 2004): 129-140.

“The Dead of Arginusae and the Debate About the Athenian Navy” [in modern Greek translation as well as in English] Nautiki Epithewrisi 545.160s (Jan-Feb 2004): 40-67.

“Flames Over Athens,” Arion 12.1 (Spring/Summer 2004): 101-116.

“Go Tell the Spartans,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 17.1 (Autumn 2004): 16-25.

“Alexander: The Military Campaign,” in J. Roisman, ed., Alexander the Great. Leiden: Brill, 2003, pp. 133-158.

“On National Security Strategy and American Policy Toward Iraq.” In M. Evangelista, ed. Iraq and Beyond: The New U.S. National Security Strategy. Occasional Paper No. 27. Ithaca, N.Y.: Peace Studies Program, Cornell University, January 2003, pp. 11-14.

“Reflections on the Citizen-Soldier. “Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly The United States Army’s Senior Professional Journal. Summer 2003 vol. 33.2: pp. 66-77.

“Collateral Damage: Commentary.” In Andru E. Wall, ed. The Legal and Ethical Implications of NATO’s Kosovo Campaign. International Law Studies vol. 78. Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2002, pp. 293-296.

“The Price of Rivalry.” MHQ. The Quarterly Journal of Military History 13.3 (Spring), 2001.

“Democracy, Kimon, and the Evolution of Athenian Naval Tactics in the Fifth Century B.C.” In Pernille Flensted-Jensen, Thomas Heine Nielsen, and Lene Rubenstein, eds. Polis & Politics. Studies in Ancient Greek History. Presented to Mogens Herman Hansen on his 60th Birthday. (Museum Tuscylanum Press. University of Copenhagen) 315-326.

“Perspectives on the death of fifth-century Athenian seamen,” in Hans van Wees, ed. War and Violence in Ancient Greece. (Duckworth), 261-284.

“Victory By Guile. Breaking the Siege of Constantinople” in MHQ. The Quarterly Journal of Military History 11.3 (Spring), 104-111.

“Epilogue: On War and Society in the Pre-Modern World,” with Victor Hanson in K. Raaflaub and N. Rosenstein, eds. War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Harvard University Press), 439-453 (1999).

“The Dark Ages Made Lighter: The Consequences of Two Defeats,” in Robert Cowley, ed. What If: The Greatest might Have Beens in military History (New Putnam), 71-92 (1999).

“Rome’s Persian Mirage” in MHQ. The Quarterly Journal of Military History 11.4 (Autumn 1999), 18-27.

“A Lighter Dark Ages,” in “What If? The Greatest Might Have Beens of Military History,” MHQ, The Quarterly Journal of Military History 10:3 (Spring 1998), 69.

“The Problem of Periodization: The Case of the Peloponnesian War,” in M. Golden and P. Toohey, eds., Inventing Ancient Culture: Historicism, Periodization, and the Ancient World (Routledge), 165-175.

“The Art of Alliance and the Peloponnesian War,” in C.D. Hamilton and P. Krentz, eds., Polis and Polemos: Essays on Politics, War and History in Ancient Greece in Honor of Donald Kagan (Regina Press), 127-140.

“Genealogy, Ideology, and Society in Democratic Athens.” In I. Morris and K. Raaflaub, eds., Democracy 2500? Questions and Challenges. Archaeological Institute of America. Colloquia and Conference Papers, No. 2, 1997 (Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company): 141-154.

Awards

Battle of Salamis named by Washingron Post as one of the best books of the year, 2004; starred reviews in Kirkus Reviews, Booklist.

Invited participant in 50th Annual National Security Seminar, U.S. Army War College, 7-11 June, 2004.

Resident Fellow, MacDowell Colony for the Arts, 2004.

Faculty Fellow, Society for the Humanities, Cornell (spring semester), 2001.

Laurence S. Rockefeller Fellow, University Center for Human Values, Princeton, 1998-99.

Lucius N. Littauer Foundation research Grant for travel to Poland and Israel, 1998.

Links

I hold a joint appointment in the Department of Classics (http://www.arts.cornell.edu/classics/index.asp).
I am former director of the Peace Studies Program (http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/PeaceProgram/).
I am director of the new program in Freedom and Free Societies (website coming soon).