A 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.
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.
