Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis-Hanson show this is a special edition because

Victor's book was published on May 7th we're going to talk about some of the

chapters in that book and we'll be looking this time at the

introduction and then we'll go into the chapter on Thebes. It is called

the end of everything and about the total annihilation of not just cities or armies but

their culture as well and so he's chosen four incidents of this, Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople and Tanaq Chitlan and all three of the civilizations of those cities were destroyed absolutely. So that's

what we're talking about and we're going to go into the first chapter and Thebes today, so stay with us and we'll be right back.

For those who haven't, don't know Victor very well, he is an author and scholar, both philologists and classicist and he's written extensively on

warfare and modern politics as well. He is the Martin and Ili Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and

and the Wain and Marsha Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at

Hillsdale College and we welcome one and all to this special edition.

So Victor, we're going to have a look at your opening of the book that you're writing,

it's just a fascinating book in the sense that, of course,

me, like probably a lot of readers are thinking, well, can this happen to the United States?

But we'll probably hold that question off until later.

I wanted to look at the opening of the book and you try to give a sense of why even write about this

subject?

And I get the feeling that the book is as much a warning as it is a study of sudden reversal and collapse and I was wondering if you could

elaborate a little bit on that from your book the end of everything which is a pretty

imposing book but you know I noticed if you would give me a second just to read the

opening you have an interesting statement here. You say,

Niavetay, Ubrus, flawed assessment of relative strengths and weaknesses,

...