Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World

by Dorian Lynskey Narrated by Not Yet Available

Overview

A rich, captivating, and darkly humorous look into the evolution of apocalyptic thought, exploring how film and literature interact with developments in science, politics, and culture, and what factors drive our perennial obsession with the end of the world.

As Dorian Lynskey writes, “People have been contemplating the end of the world for millennia.” In this immersive and compelling cultural history, Lynskey reveals how religious prophecies of the apocalypse were secularized in the early 19th century by Lord Byron and Mary Shelley in a time of dramatic social upheaval and temporary climate change, inciting a long tradition of visions of the end without gods.

With a discerning eye and acerbic wit, Lynskey examines how various doomsday tropes and predictions in literature, art, music, and film have arisen from contemporary anxieties, whether they be comets, pandemics, world wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Y2K, or the climate emergency. Far from being grim, Lynskey guides readers through a rich array of fascinating stories and surprising facts, allowing us to keep company with celebrated works of art and the people who made them, from H.G. Wells, Jack London, W.B. Yeats and J.G. Ballard to The Twilight Zone, Dr. Strangelove, Mad Max and The Terminator.

Prescient and original, Everything Must Go is a brilliant, sweeping work of history that provides many astute insights for our times and speaks to our urgent concerns for the future.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Clever and voluminous. . . . So engagingly plotted and written that it’s a pleasure to bask in its constant stream of remarkable tidbits and illuminating insights.”
—The Guardian (UK)
 
“A major piece of work, [a] heavyweight yet fleet-of-foot look at humankind’s fixation on the end of days, told through literature, popular art, science and more, as compelling as it is authoritative.”
—The Telegraph (UK)
 
“A fascinating guide. . . . Full of less-known cultural gems.”
—New Scientist (UK)
 
“Lynskey has a journalist’s eye for a great story and a killer quotation. . . . He is ridiculously well informed.”
—Literary Review (UK)
 
“Everything Must Go will make you happy to be alive and reading. . . . Brilliant.”
—The Spectator (UK)

“For a book drenched in destruction, Everything Must Go is not depressing, and often wryly funny. It is incredibly deeply researched, fluently written, moving deftly between close-up detail and broad-bush analysis.”
—The Arts Desk (UK)

“So enjoyable, that I didn’t want it to end—the world, or the book.”
—Adam Rutherford, author of A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived

“I was blown away by this book. The staggering range of references, the razor-sharp analysis, the wisdom, left me gasping out loud at times. Lynskey also somehow manages to make a book about the end of the world feel . . . hopeful. One of the best non-fiction writers around.”
—Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireworld

“Impossibly epic, brain-expanding, life-affirming and profound. You’ll never see humanity the same way again.”
—Ian Dunt, author of How Westminster Works

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191571768
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	01/28/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged