Victor Davis Hanson and the Squint

When reading a good book gets exhausting

Victor Davis Hanson’s new book, The End of Everything, follows an intriguing line of inquiry. By looking at a handful of instances in history — Alexander the Great’s decision to destroy the city of Thebes, the Roman destruction of Carthage in the Third Punic War, the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the annihilation of the Aztec Empire at the hands of Hernan Cortes — Hanson examines what causes nations to be not only defeated but utterly destroyed, and what prompts the aggressors to go that one catastrophic extra step from victory to extermination.