NICK MOUNT
“Smashing idols, defacing monuments, burning books, breaking windows, pulling down statues…for as long as humans have created things, they have also wilfully damaged and destroyed them. What is vandalism? Who does it, and why? Does vandalism also create?
Weaving together history, psychology, literature, sociology, and art, Vandals sets off on a jaunty quest through four millennia of human history in pursuit of the shifting role that vandalism has played in societies around the globe and throughout the ages: from Ancient Mesopotamia, where rulers warned off vandals with curses, to our own day, when states and corporations decry the petty crimes of teens and protestors while destroying far more of our world themselves.
A witty and dazzlingly researched romp peopled with pharaohs and prophets, conquistadors and revolutionaries, vandals of art and artists as vandals, Vandals puts forth a dramatic new theory of civilization in which destruction is the constant—and necessary—companion of creation, homo creator also homo destroyer.”
To be published February 16, 2027, by Penguin Random House-McClelland & Stewart in Canada and Simon & Schuster internationally.
Available for pre-order now.
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“A revelation. Vandals is an astonishing, beautifully crafted work of extraordinary literary grace and analytical precision, turning what could have been a grim catalogue of violence into a brilliant illumination of human history.”
—Fernando Báez, author of A Universal History of the Destruction of Books
"Magnificent. An eloquent and exhaustive account of not only the worst things humans do to each other and the things they create, but why."
—Paul Theroux, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Railway Bazaar
"Concise and conversational, Mount’s snappy style aptly serves his riveting subject . . . An erudite, elegant, and intellectually engaging foray into human destructiveness."
—Kirkus (starred review)
“Like Sapiens and The Dawn of Everything before it, Nick Mount’s Vandals will reshape our shared understanding of history and the world we live in now….Vandals is a future classic.”
—Jared Bland, former Publisher, M&S
“The history of destruction, so vividly told in this book, may sound like a depressing subject, but it isn’t. Vandalism is part of the ferment of culture, and even the Vandals themselves were harbingers of innovation. To love culture, Nick Mount suggests, is to love vandalism, too.”
—Harvard University professor Martin Puchner, author of Culture: The Story of Us, from Cave Art to K-Pop
Advance Praise