Everything Must Go

The Stories We Tell About the End of the World

De: Dorian Lynskey

Narrado por: Dorian Lynskey

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.

©2022 Dorian Lynskey (P)2024 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Sweeping. . . . Lynskey’s astute analysis excels at teasing out the existential concerns that have animate artists over the course of millennia. Readers won’t want this to end.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“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)

“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

A book that I needed

When I was in middle school I was afraid that the world was going to end and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my adulthood. The end world was and still is a constant source of anxiety and mental agony. I would say this book cured me of it, but it was a book helped me better understand my fears. The author is right, it’s gift to be here and experience life. Hopefully you get to feel the same way too.