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The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation Paperback – Sept. 2 2025
鶹
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, 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 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.
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBasic Books
- Publication dateSept. 2 2025
- Dimensions13.97 x 2.38 x 21.08 cm
- ISBN-101541673514
- ISBN-13978-1541673519

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Product description
Review
“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.ŨĕIrish Times
"Victor Davis Hanson, impressively learned, imaginative, temperate, and discerning, has writtena history of the most vicious old wars that is also instructive in dealing with modern monsters."―Claremont Review of Books
“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.ŨĕBarry 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.ŨĕAndrew 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.ŨĕH. R. McMaster, author of Battlegrounds
Review
“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.ŨĕIrish Times
"Victor Davis Hanson, impressively learned, imaginative, temperate, and discerning, has writtena history of the most vicious old wars that is also instructive in dealing with modern monsters."―Claremont Review of Books
“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.ŨĕBarry 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.ŨĕAndrew 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.ŨĕH. R. McMaster, author of Battlegrounds
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Basic Books
- Publication date : Sept. 2 2025
- Language : English
- Print length : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1541673514
- ISBN-13 : 978-1541673519
- Item weight : 322 g
- Dimensions : 13.97 x 2.38 x 21.08 cm
- 鶹 Rank: #399,819 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #53 in History of Early Civilization (Books)
- #54 in History of Civilization & Culture
- #285 in Military History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in military history and classics 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 The Second World Wars, The Dying Citizen, and The End of Everything. He lives in Selma, California.
Customer reviews
Top reviews from Canada
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- Reviewed in Canada on June 9, 2024Verified PurchaseThe author is a gifted writer and thinker. In this book Hansen makes clear how fragile civilization is and thet we had better respect and manage what we have or we will lose it.
- Reviewed in Canada on June 17, 2024Verified Purchaseits tells the story how the great USA, WILL GO BY THE WAYSIDE LIKE ALL GREAT EMPIRES
- Reviewed in Canada on February 18, 2025Verified PurchaseExcellent read. A truly great author
- Reviewed in Canada on August 1, 2024Verified PurchaseVDH exposes the study cases of 5 absolute Empires that were destroyed to oblivion. They all believe to be eternal and then in a blink of an eye they simply disappeared. Great analysis.
- Reviewed in Canada on March 18, 2025Verified PurchaseVictor David Hansen’s the end of everything reminds us that a declining civilization that doesn’t reverse that trend might be annihilated by a ascendant empire.
- Reviewed in Canada on August 8, 2024Verified PurchaseVery well written and very informative
- Reviewed in Canada on August 21, 2024Verified PurchaseVery educational as Victor Davis Hanson is a genius
- Reviewed in Canada on May 20, 2024Verified PurchaseI liked the various analyses of the destruction of of societies- causes and results. Unfortunately, this same destruction is coming to North America.
Top reviews from other countries
- UCT graduate and alumnusReviewed in Germany on September 15, 2024
4.0 out of 5 stars "I told you so"
Verified PurchaseVDH’s book brings up a sense of Gore Vidal ‘s maxim:
“The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so”.
Except that when you get to the “I told you so” moment, it’s very likely that you have already been vaporized by a nuclear blast.
Given that I knew next to nothing about the fall of Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople or Tenochtitlán, I found it riveting.
- Claude MedeotReviewed in Sweden on June 11, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars V.D.Hanson The End of Everything
Verified PurchaseExcellent Book by Victor Davis Hanson. I've read ancient history as a young man and know the topics that are covered here but the analysis of those known facts viewed here is different because they are put into a formidable other perception; gives more depth to understanding.
It's very probable that we would never have come to view things in such a novel fashion as is presented and exposed in this book.
Such writings bring much enjoyment to re-reading history.
Bravo Mr. Hanson