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  • Notes from an Apocalypse

  • A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back
  • Written by: Mark O'Connell
  • Narrated by: Mark O'Connell
  • Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (3 ratings)

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Notes from an Apocalypse

Written by: Mark O'Connell
Narrated by: Mark O'Connell
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Publisher's Summary

 "Harrowing, tender-hearted, and funny as hell." (Jenny Offill)

“Fascinating…Oddly uplifting.” (The Economist)

"Smart, funny, irreverent, and philosophically rich." (Wall Street Journal)

By the author of the award-winning To Be a Machine, an absorbing, deeply felt audiobook about our anxious present tense - and coming to grips with the future

We're alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny. A viral pandemic has the power to draw our global community to a halt. Old postwar alliances are crumbling. Everywhere you look there's an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How is a person supposed to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What does it mean to have children - nothing if not an act of hope? What might it be like to live through the worst? And what on Earth is anybody doing about it?

Dublin-based writer Mark O'Connell is consumed by these questions - and, as the father of two young children himself, he finds them increasingly urgent. In Notes from an Apocalypse, he crosses the globe in pursuit of answers. He tours survival bunkers in South Dakota. He ventures to New Zealand, a favored retreat of billionaires banking on civilization's collapse. He engages with would-be Mars colonists, preppers, right-wing conspiracists. And he bears witness to those places, like Chernobyl, that the future has already visited - real-life portraits of the end of the world as we know it. In doing so, he comes to a resolution, while offering listeners a unique window into our contemporary imagination.

Both investigative and deeply personal, Notes from an Apocalypse is an affecting, humorous, and surprisingly hopeful meditation on our present moment. With insight, humanity, and wit, O'Connell leaves you to wonder: What if the end of the world isn't the end of the world?

©2020 Mark O'Connell (P)2020 Random House Audio

What the critics say

Named one of The Millions and Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2020

"Extraordinarily good - insightful, affecting, funny, and appropriately terrifying. The perfect handbook for the end times. Mark O’Connell is a truly brilliant writer and Notes from an Apocalypse could hardly be more incisive, or more timely." (Sally Rooney, author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends)

"Anyone with open eyes lives today bound by apocalyptic fears for the future and the maddening same-ness that defines the present day. Notes from an Apocalypse is a penetrating investigation into that new uncanny, which shapes both our collective indifference and our climate rage." (David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth)

"Notes from an Apocalypse is such a fantastic book. It's harrowing, tender-hearted and funny as hell. O'Connell proves himself to be a genius guide through all the circles of imagined and anticipated doom. Read it, then immediately buy a copy for your ‘but what's the worst that could happen?’ friend." (Jenny Offill, author of Weather and Dept. of Speculation)

What listeners say about Notes from an Apocalypse

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  • 2020-06-12

The neurotic musing of a left-wing pessimist

I give the review the above tile with only slight jest, as I actually liked the book. But to add context it was good, but definitely not great and the reader should go in being aware what they are getting into. The author is occasionally funny, but frequently pessimistic and always vocal about what he hates about our world (use of fossil fuels, capitalism, and globalization) which I found difficult to constantly hear. His ‘investigation’ of other people who also obsessed with end of the world is not so much of an investigation as he does not try to understand other viewpoints, but more of him looking into these other people / groups to criticize them. It is only near the end of the book that he seems to find some (albeit small) hope that life may not be a horrible experience. I would suggest he read Dan Carlin’s The End is Always Near to get some context on these thoughts, but kind of think that everyone sees what they want with the future and a pessimist will always see how horrible things could be and make the present worse with the anticipation.

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