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How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures
by Lizzie Wade
A richly imagined new view on the great human tradition of apocalypse, from the rise of Homo sapiens to the climate instability of our present, that defies conventional wisdom and long-held stories about our deep past to reveal how cataclysmic events are not irrevocable endings, but transformations.
A drought lasts for decades, a disease rips through a city, a civilization collapses. When we finally uncover the ruins, we ask: what happened? The good news is, we've been here before. History is long, and people have already confronted just about every apocalypse we're facing today. But these days, archaeologists are getting better at seeing stories of survival, transformation, and even progress hidden within those histories of collapse and destruction. Perhaps, we begin to see, apocalypses do not destroy, but create, new worlds.
Apocalypse offers a new way of understanding human history, reframing it as a series of crises and cataclysms that we survived, moments of choice in an evolution of humanity that has never been predetermined or even linear. Here Lizzie Wade asks us to reckon with our understanding of these events, from the end of Old Kingdom Egypt, the collapse of the Classic Maya, to the Black Death, and shows us how people lived through and beyond them—and even reconsidered what a new world could look like in their wake.
The more we learn about apocalypses past, the more hope we have that we will survive our own. It won't be pleasant. It won't be fair. The world will be different on the other side, and our cultures and communities—perhaps even our species—will be different too.
"A sobering look at how cultures die." —Kirkus Reviews
"A compelling look at disasters and their aftermath, especially relevant in times of changing climate. Recommended for readers interested in climate narratives." —Library Journal
"Written amid one of the world's worst pandemics in a century and published in the wake of catastrophic California wildfires, journalist Lizzie Wade's Apocalypse widens the lens to describe vividly how multiple societies have experienced massive upheavals and have emerged altered in sometimes unexpected ways. Combining extensive research and reporting with some speculative digressions, Wade travels from prehistoric Europe to the contemporary West for stories of extreme hardship and humankind's response to it... . [and] has done an impressive job recounting some of these stories." —Shelf Awareness
"The world has ended many times and usually, amazingly, humans keep going. Rooted in solid science that never loses sight of the human and the possible, this book shows us why good stories and an understanding of history matter more than ever." —Agustín Fuentes, author of The Creative Spark
"A timely examination of catastrophes that humanity has faced through history. There are lessons, warnings, and solace to be drawn from this deep-time perspective on the existential challenges facing us today." —Alice Roberts, author of Ancestors
This information about Apocalypse was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lizzie Wade is an award-winning journalist and correspondent for the prestigious journal Science. She covers archaeology, anthropology, and Latin America for the magazine's print and online news sections. Her work has also appeared in Wired, The Atlantic, Slate, the New York Times, Aeon, Smithsonian, and Archaeology, among other publications. She lives in Mexico City.
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