Book Review: The End of Everything by Victor Davis Hanson

Here’s a quick review on a book that had great impact on me.

The Basics

Category: History
Originally Published: 2024
Pages: 287

Book Summary / What This Book Is About

This book tells the stories of four civilizations that were annihilated after a battle and ceased to exist:

Thebes was vanquished by Alexander, December 335 BC
Carthage was vanquished by the Romans, 149-146 BC
Constantinople was vanquished by the Ottomans, Spring 1453
The Aztecs were vanquished by the Spanish, Summer 1521

The commonalities of these four clashes is that instead of the winners winning in the normal way: enslaving, raping, and pillaging the losers or something like that, the winners wiped the losers off the face of the planet forever.

Main Takeaway / The First Thing I Think About When I Think About This Book

The first thing I think about is that human nature doesn’t change. We are the same now as they were in the past. We may think we’re more enlightened or smarter today but I don’t think we are. Our patterns of behavior repeat. I don’t believe this was Victor Davis Hanson’s central message, it’s just the first thought I have when I think about this book. For the last few years, I’ve witnessed our planet seemingly on the brink of something and wonder what will come next. Will a nation, a faction, a sect, or a small group of rogue warriors go into full annihilation mode and end one of our civilizations? And if so, who will attack whom? And when? How will the world change?

I found some common themes in this book with another great one I read a few years ago by Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing With The Changing World Order. In it, Dalio introduces and explains cycles of civilizations that cause major changes. He calls them The Three Big Cycles, which are: ONE: The Big Cycle of Money, Credit, Debt, and Economic Activity, TWO: The Big Cycle of Internal Order and Disorder, and THREE: The Big Cycle of External Order and Disorder. What you learn is that when a world power incurs too much debt, when there is growing disorder within that country, and when there is growing disorder among different countries, you could be close to a changing world order. These changes usually occur every 75-100 years and the last major change was World War II, when the USA emerged as the leader, supplanting the British. So – and nothing to worry about or anything – but when the three cycles hit Level 5, which again, seems to happen every 75-100 years, that’s when you start to see major changes happening. Changing world orders can be done in painful unprecedented destructive ways, or as peacefully as possible.

How Principles for Dealing With The Changing World Order and The End of Everything are related are that the former maps out timetables of the future based on the past and the latter shows you examples of what the future could look like based on the past.

Final Thoughts

I love history and I found the stories fascinating. They were exciting and action-packed, the stuff movies are made of. Of the four stories, my favorite was the one one about the Spanish conquering the Aztecs. Why? Maybe because of the shock value. First, the bravery and ability of the Spaniards to pull it off. Hernan Cortez is especially mind-blowing. It’s hard to imagine any group of men today with that kind of grit – both physically and mentally. For example, the Spanish conquistadors dissembled their fleet of ships and carried them 7000+ feet above sea level through the Mexican jungle to Lake Texcoco, reassembled them, and used them to attack Tenochtitlan from the water. How does one actually pull that off? It’s insane. They also rebuilt the city after demolishing it. On the flip side, the depravity of the Aztecs is also mind-blowing. Almost every horrible thing you can think of, they did. The Spanish were appalled: “gruesome human sacrifice, cannibalism, the polytheistic worship of stone idols, polygamy, and overt homosexuality, to name a few of the many elements they saw as odious in Aztec culture.” It was shocking to read how the Aztecs would thrust a knife into a live human and rip his heart out. Can you imagine what the Spanish thought the first time they snuck up on one of those ceremonies? Watching them carry a captured enemy soldier up the pyramid steps, strapping him down and then pulling out the knives…. truly horrific. I’m a big Victor Davis Hanson fan and this was the first book of his I read. Now I’m a bigger Victor Davis Hanson fan.