Vandals: A History of Destruction from Antiquity to Tomorrow

For fans of Yuval Noah Harari and David Graeber comes a sweeping history of destruction, exploring how our urge to burn it all down has shaped human progress across the centuries.

Smashing idols, defacing monuments, burning books, breaking windows, toppling statues... for as long as humans have created things, we have also willfully destroyed them: for revenge, for profit, for propaganda, sometimes just for fun.

But what is vandalism exactly? Who does it, and why?

Weaving together history,...