Donald Kagan, leading neo-conservative historian, dead at 89

By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — A prominent neo-conservative historian and Greek scholar has died. Donald Kagan, a professor emeritus at Yale University and the father of historians Robert and Frederick Kagan, was 89. Kagan was an advocate for U.S. wars overseas, from Vietnam and Iraq, and opponent of multiculturalism at home. He studied ancient Greece in college and regarded himself as Greek to his very soul. Kagan wrote several books either entirely or partly about the rise and fall of Athens’ golden age. One of his works was an acclaimed and popular four-volume series on the devastating Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies.