The end of everything: how wars descend into annihilation

Introduction: how civilizations disappear

Hope, danger's comforter: the obliteration of classical Thebes (December 335 BC)

The wages of vengeance: the destruction of Carthage and Punic civilization in Africa (149-146 BC)

Deadly delusions: the fall of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantines (Spring 1453)

Imperial hubris: the annihilation of the Aztec empire (Summer 1521)

Epilogue: how the unimaginable becomes the inevitable.