This is a book that would have lost none of its erudition or energy had it been 25 percent shorter. But Lynskey also happens to be a terrifically entertaining writer, with a requisite sense of gallows humor.
Weirdly, the book isn’t depressing, partly, I suppose, because these disasters haven’t completely wiped us out (yet). The clever and insightful writing of Lynskey, a British cultural historian and podcaster, also helps it to avoid being a downer ... His book shows that exciting intellectual history isn’t an oxymoron. These works combine sharp writing with capacious research, rigorous thinking, interesting mini-narratives within the larger story and well-drawn character portraits.
A heady critical history of the depictions of Armageddon, our current-day mania for disaster has plenty of precedent ... Fascinating ... Lynskey writes engagingly, moves briskly between subjects and collates a great deal of information with minimal filler. One is impressed, and even reassured, throughout Everything Must Go, by the orderly bookkeeping imposed on this catalog of nightmares.
Lynskey...has assembled biological, geological, archeological, literary, and cinematic permutations of existential finales, leaving no stone unturned, be it meteor, comet, or asteroid ... Doom without the gloom. His accounts of natural disasters are leavened not only by the imaginary disasters in his purview but also by his obvious enjoyment of them ... It’s only because Lynskey’s book is so thoroughly researched that one notices peculiar omissions ... Lynskey’s darker forebodings become, in their own compendious way, almost heartening.
Great detail ... It can be maddeningly discursive, drifting into countless eddies only to swerve back into the mainstream of Lynskey’s narrative. This completism stunts the book’s impact and leaves less room than I’d like for today’s most pressing, and primal, fears of an apocalypse ushered in by our phones, their apps, and our stubborn faith in technology.
Clever and voluminous ... A long book – not just because the subject is so large, but because Lynskey crams in every interesting fact and obscure example he has come across ... The capaciousness can be wearying; at times, even the author seems overwhelmed by the mass of material he has uncovered.
