The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation

by Victor Davis Hanson

Overview

An instant New York Times bestseller, this “profound book” (Wall Street Journal) charts how and why some societies chose to utterly destroy their foes, and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time

War can settle disputes, topple tyrants, and bend the trajectory of civilization—sometimes to the breaking point. From Troy to Hiroshima, moments when war has ended in utter annihilation have reverberated through the centuries, signaling the end of political systems, cultures, and epochs. Though much has changed over the millennia, human nature remains the same. Modern societies are not immune from the horror of a war of extinction. 
 
In The End of Everything, military historian Victor Davis Hanson narrates a series of sieges and sackings that span the age of antiquity to the conquest of the New World to show how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration. In the stories of Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlan, he depicts war’s drama, violence, and folly. Highlighting the naivete that plagued the vanquished and the wrath that justified mass slaughter, Hanson delivers a sobering call to contemporary readers to heed the lessons of obliteration lest we blunder into catastrophe once again. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541673526
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	05/07/2024
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	1,918
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in military history 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 A War Like No Other, The Second World Wars, and The Dying Citizen. He lives in Selma, California.  

Editorial Reviews

"Relevant to the modern world by combining granularity with big-picture analysis and teasing out meaning from a mastery of details... [A] profound book."—Wall Street Journal

“Magisterial accounts of four cataclysmic case studies make this a must for anyone with an interest in ancient and premodern history...Hanson writes elegantly and uses an impressive range of documentation, both ancient and contemporary, with due consideration given to different perspectives.”—Irish Times

“This stupendous book offers a gripping account of catastrophic defeat. Outstanding military historian Victor Davis Hanson takes us through four wars, each of which not only crushed an enemy but destroyed a civilization. Are we doomed to go the way of Thebes, Carthage, the Byzantines, or the Aztecs? To understand the challenges we face, you must read The End of Everything.”—Barry Strauss, author of The War that Made the Roman Empire

“What a paragon and a powerhouse is Hanson! The hymnal tells us of the fate of ‘Earth’s proud empires’ and the poet reminds us of what will happen to ‘our pomp of yesterday,’ yet it takes an historian of Hanson’s intellectual caliber to explain how and why civilizations are annihilated in war, with example after well-researched and cogently written example. As well as Hanson the historian, however, here too is Hanson the philosopher, with his insightful take on how human nature has failed to adapt to our ultra-technological age. Readers will be shocked quite how often total military, cultural, and societal extirpation happens in in our species’ story. We need to learn from this groundbreaking book how to stop it happening to us.”—Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill

“In recent years, we have witnessed man’s inhumanity toward man that many thought had been consigned to the distant past. In The End of Everything, Hanson tells compelling and harrowing stories of how civilizations perished. He helps us consider contemporary affairs in light of that history, think about the unthinkable, and recognize the urgency of trying to prevent our own demise.”—H. R. McMaster, author of Battlegrounds

From the Publisher

2024-02-17
Historical survey of civilizations brought to an end by war and conquest.

Civilizations collapse for many reasons, and these days we worry not so much about war but about climate change and natural disasters. However, as classicist and military historian Hanson warns, it’s not out of the question that a modern enemy (Putin) might attempt to erase an opponent (Ukraine) as surely as Cortés brought down the Aztecs. “The gullibility, and indeed ignorance, of contemporary governments and leaders about the intent, hatred, ruthlessness, and capability of their enemies are not surprising,” writes the author, surveying a world in which genocide is no stranger. The first genocide, some historians hold, was that of Carthage, laid low by the Romans in the third of three fierce wars, the first two of which intended to secure Roman victory but not necessarily the erasure of the city. How Rome became bent on the enemy’s destruction engages Hanson as strategist and tactician, but it seems clear from his narrative that Carthage, complying with most of Rome’s demands, was by that point a mostly blameless victim—an analog, that is, to Ukraine. More intransigent was Thebes, perhaps an analog to Taiwan in the face of today’s China, exterminated at the hand of Alexander the Great, who saw in the annihilation a “signal [to] any would-be Macedonian rivals to the throne that Alexander was ruthless, and recklessly and unpredictably so.” Putin again, one might say. Hanson goes deep into military wonkery, but he writes vividly about relevant cases, including Constantinople and Tenochtitlán—cities, he points out, that remain occupied long after their erstwhile owners were dispatched. After all, seizing key real estate makes a strong motivator.

A good choice for geopolitics and military history alike, ranging from specific battles to general principles of warfare.

Kirkus Reviews