The End of Everything

A New York Times Bestseller

“A good choice for geopolitics and military history alike, ranging from specific battles to general principles of warfare.”–Kirkus Reviews“Hanson has produced a detailed, scholarly, and at times grisly account of the annihilation of four once proud civilizations.”–Foreign Affairs“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“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“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 Trojan War“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 Napoleon“A stunning account of four ancient wars that destroyed entire civilizations…. Mr. Hanson’s book underscores that no country, including our own, is immune to the timeless forces and potential for evil that he describes.”–Justice Anthony Kennedy, Wall Street Journal“Victor Davis Hanson, impressively learned, imaginative, temperate, and discerning, has written a history of the most vicious old wars that is also instructive in dealing with modern monsters.”–Claremont Review of Books“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