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The End of Everything

How Wars Descend into Annihilation
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Brief Description
A New York Times-bestselling historian charts how and why societies from ancient Greece to the modern era 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... Read More
Format: Hardback
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A New York Times-bestselling historian charts how and why societies from ancient Greece to the modern era chose to utterly destroy their foes, and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description
A New York Times-bestselling historian charts how and why societies from ancient Greece to the modern era 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 civilisation—sometimes to the breaking point. From Troy to Hiroshima, moments when war has ended in utter annihilation have reverberated through the centuries, signalling 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, illustrating 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 naivety 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.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781541673526

Publisher: Basic Books

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 30 May 2024

Country: United States

Imprint: Basic Books

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 36.0mm

Width: 158.0mm

Height: 238.0mm

Weight: 558g

Pages: 352

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.

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