Donald Kagan

File:Donald-kagan.jpg

Donald Kagan (born 1932) is a Yale historian specializing in ancient Greece, notable for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War. He was Dean of Yale College from 1989-1992.

Born into a Jewish family in Lithuania, Kagan grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where his family emigrated shortly after the death of his father. He graduated from Brooklyn College, then received an MA from Brown University and a PhD from Ohio State University in 1958.

He converted from a liberal Democrat to a staunch neoconservative in the 1970s. On the eve of the 2000 presidential elections, Kagan and his son, Frederick Kagan, published While America Sleeps, a clarion call to increase defense spending.

Kagan is currently Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale. His course "The Origins of War" has been one of the university's most popular courses for twenty-five years. He lives in Connecticut.

Another son, Robert Kagan, is also active in neoconservative politics and foreign relations.

Books

• Kagan, Donald. (1965). The Great Dialogue: A History of Greek Political Thought from Homer to Polybius. New York: Free Press.
• Kagan, Donald. (1969). The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801405017.
• Kagan, Donald. (1974). The Archidamian War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 080140889X.
• Kagan, Donald. (1981). The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801413672.
• Kagan, Donald. (1987). The Fall of the Athenian Empire. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801419352
• Kagan, Donald. (1991). Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0684863952.
• Kagan, Donald. (1995). On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0385423748.
• Kagan, Donald and Kagan, Frederick. (2000). While America Sleeps. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312206240.
• Kagan, Donald, Ozment, Steven, and Turner, Frank M.. (2003). The Western Heritage. New York: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0131828398.
• Kagan, Donald, Craig, Albert M., Graham, William A., Ozment, Steven, and Turner, Frank M. (2000). The Heritage of World Civilizations.
• Kagan, Donald. (2003). The Peloponnesian War. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0670032115.

External links

• Rebuilding America's Defenses (2000), controversial PNAC manifesto to which the Kagans are signatories
• Right Web profile of Donald Kagan
• SourceWatch profile of Donald Kagan
• Kagan Classics faculty page at Yale
• Kagan History faculty page at Yale
• "Yale Historian Donald Kagan, Mixing the Old And the Neo" (2005), article in the Washington Post