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The End of Everything
How Wars Descend into Annihilation
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Brief Description
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...
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The End of Everything
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See moreAn 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
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Description
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 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, now with an extended conclusion, 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 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: 9781541673519
Publisher: Basic Books
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 25 September 2025
Country: United States
Imprint: Basic Books
Illustration: 8 maps
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 140.0mm
Height: 210.0mm
Weight: 320g
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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