THE THOUGHT BOOK OF THE YEAR, THE TIMESA GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR'Game of Thrones-style intra-elite conflict meets big data' TLS'Extraordinary. . . the culmination of many years of highly original and innovative work' BloombergOne of the most iconoclastic thinkers of our time offers a brilliant new theory of how society worksWhat leads to political turbulence and social breakdown? How do elites maintain their dominant position? And why do ruling classes sometimes suddenly lose their grip on power?For decades, complexity scientist Peter Turchin has been studying world history like no-one else. Assembling vast databases mined from 10,000 years of human activity, and then developing new models, he has transformed the way we learn from the past. End Times is the result: a ground-breaking account of how society works.