Everything Must Go - by Dorian Lynskey (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK from The New York Times

"[Lynskey] has the kind of omnivorous sensibility for a project like this. He has immersed himself in pulpy sci-fi, gloomy poetry, the literary criticism of Susan Sontag and the Book of Revelation. . . . A terrifically entertaining writer, with a requisite sense of gallows humor. . . . Lynskey moves smoothly from apocalyptic tales about comets and asteroids to killer robots and infected zombies."
--Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

"Thoroughly researched. . . . Lynskey's darker forebodings become, in their own compendious way, almost heartening. So many dire prophecies, so many pronouncements of doom from clerics and secularists alike, so many tributaries flowing toward extinction--yet here we are. And here we remain until we or the universe decides otherwise."
--The New Yorker

"Clever and insightful. . . . [Lynskey] combine[s] sharp writing with capacious research, rigorous thinking, interesting mini-narratives within the larger story and well-drawn character portraits."
--The Washington Post

"A heady critical history of the depictions of Armageddon. . . . Fascinating. . . . Lynskey writes engagingly, moves briskly between subjects and collates a great deal of information."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Wherever you look in contemporary pop culture, humanity is getting wiped out--if not by pollution and extreme weather (as in Wall-E and The Day After Tomorrow), then by a meteor or comet (Armageddon, Deep Impact), a virus (Station Eleven, The Walking Dead ), or sudden, inexplicable infertility (Children of Men). . . . Confronted with melting glaciers and vanishing species, our promises to use paper straws or shut off the faucet while we brush our teeth feel less like solutions than superstitious gestures. . . . Reading Everything Must Go can serve as therapy for this kind of fatalism."
--The Atlantic

"Lynskey makes clear . . . how stubbornly civilization clings to irrational theories about the world's destruction, even after science began to explain the world to us in the 19th and 20th centuries. If anything, new advances in technology only inspired more outrageous speculative fiction. . . . As Lynskey enumerates in great detail, the notion of man being the destroyer of worlds remains the prevailing leitmotif of doomsday art."
--The Boston Globe

"Fascinating. . . . Mesmerizing. . . . Lynskey suggests this is what our end-of-the-world stories are really for: forcing us to understand, again and again, what really matters."
--Airmail

"Erudite, delightfully witty. . . . Everything Must Go encompasses the stories told by doomsday cults, scientific Cassandras, pulp novelists, video game designers, and Hollywood movies. . . . Every time Lynskey detailed another prediction of our demise that didn't pan out (yet), I felt my spirits lift a bit."
--Laura Miller, Slate

"Every few years, even decades, a media frenzy emerges about the imminent end of the world. . . . Lynskey deftly catalogs the many panicked--and nowadays, sometimes real--Armageddon fantasies we hear about."
--The Observer

"Utterly absorbing."
--Open Letters Review

"Dorian Lynskey propulsively explores our fascination with, and hastening of, the end of times through the lenses of literature, art, science, pop culture, and religion. The result is a mosaic transhistorical portrait of our obsession with our own demise that is, in turns, hilarious and harrowing. A cautionary tale and wild ride, both entertaining and scholarly, Everything Must Go is a brilliant examination of the interrelationship between our apocalyptic stories and our apocalyptic actions."
--Matthew Gavin Frank, author of Flight of the Diamond Smugglers

"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

"The end is just around the corner--and has been for thousands of years. . . . [An] entertaining journey through the many theories of imminent Armageddon. . . . With dry wit, Lynskey connects these apocalypse fantasies to modern culture and human nature."
--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"In this exploration of the cultural phenomenon of apocalypse, Lynskey shows that modern humans are not the first to be convinced that they are witnessing one. . . . With rich analysis and a remarkable level of research, Everything Must Go allows readers to feel a connection with generations past and offers a new lens through which to approach our current moment."
--Booklist

"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 Empireland

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

About the Author