Everything Must Go
Why We Are Obsessed With the End of the World
Published on 10. April 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
512 pages
978-1-5290-9595-1 (ISBN)
Description
A brilliantly original exploration of our obsession with the end of the world, from Mary Shelley's The Last Man to the HBO's The Last of Us.
'Will make you happy to be alive and reading - until the lights go out . . . Brilliant' - The Spectator
'Clever and voluminous . . . So engagingly plotted and written' - The Guardian
We have always told ourselves stories about the end of the world. Long before we watched superintelligent AI wage war on humanity in The Terminator, or read about a catastrophic deluge in J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World, art, literature and politics were all haunted by recurring visions of apocalypse.
In Everything Must Go - a colourful, witty and stirring cultural history of the modern world that weaves in politics, history and science - Dorian Lynskey explores the endings that we have read, listened to, or watched with morbid fascination, from the sci-fi terrors of H. G. Wells and John Wyndham to the apocalyptic ballads of Bob Dylan and planet-shattering movie blockbusters.
Whether we're fantasizing about nuclear holocaust or a collision with an asteroid, a devastating pandemic or a robot revolution, why do we like to scare ourselves, and why do we keep coming back for more? And how do fictional premonitions of the end play into real-life responses to existential threats?
Deeply illuminating about our past and our present, and surprisingly hopeful about our future, Everything Must Go will grip you from beginning to, well, end.
'I was blown away by this book' - Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland
'Impossibly epic, brain-expanding, life-affirming and profound' - Ian Dunt, author of How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't
'Will make you happy to be alive and reading - until the lights go out . . . Brilliant' - The Spectator
'Clever and voluminous . . . So engagingly plotted and written' - The Guardian
We have always told ourselves stories about the end of the world. Long before we watched superintelligent AI wage war on humanity in The Terminator, or read about a catastrophic deluge in J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World, art, literature and politics were all haunted by recurring visions of apocalypse.
In Everything Must Go - a colourful, witty and stirring cultural history of the modern world that weaves in politics, history and science - Dorian Lynskey explores the endings that we have read, listened to, or watched with morbid fascination, from the sci-fi terrors of H. G. Wells and John Wyndham to the apocalyptic ballads of Bob Dylan and planet-shattering movie blockbusters.
Whether we're fantasizing about nuclear holocaust or a collision with an asteroid, a devastating pandemic or a robot revolution, why do we like to scare ourselves, and why do we keep coming back for more? And how do fictional premonitions of the end play into real-life responses to existential threats?
Deeply illuminating about our past and our present, and surprisingly hopeful about our future, Everything Must Go will grip you from beginning to, well, end.
'I was blown away by this book' - Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland
'Impossibly epic, brain-expanding, life-affirming and profound' - Ian Dunt, author of How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't
Reviews / Votes
Clever and voluminous . . . So engagingly plotted and written that it's a pleasure to bask in its constant stream of remarkable titbits and illuminating insights. * The Guardian * Everything Must Go will make you happy to be alive and reading - until the lights go out . . . Brilliant. * The Spectator * Lynskey has a journalist's eye for a great story and a killer quotation . . . He is ridiculously well informed. * Literary Review * Lynskey's encyclopedic knowledge . . . and his glee at the sheer inventiveness of the doomsayers' creations, make this an unlikely page-turner . . . a curiously entertaining read. -- Mat Osman, <i>Observer</i> A fascinating guide . . . full of lesser-known cultural gems. * New Scientist * Terrifically entertaining * The New York Times * Clever and insightful * The Washington Post * Doom without the gloom . . . the book's own stock of revelations never runs short * The New Yorker * We keep having conversations these days about how it feels like the End Times . . . turns out, we've ALWAYS felt it's the End Times. I cannot recommend Dorian Lynskey's book enough. For a book about Armageddon, it's very uplifting. -- Caitlin Moran, author of <i>How to Be a Woman</i> A rich and remarkable book -- Matthew D'Ancona, <i>The New European</i> 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 <i>Empireland</i> So enjoyable, that I didn't want it to end - the world, or the book. -- Adam Rutherford, author of <i>A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived</i> A major piece of work, [a] heavyweight yet fleet-of-foot look at humankind's fixation on the end of days, told through the prism of history, religion, literature, popular art, science and more, as compelling as it is authoritative. -- Ian Winwood * The Telegraph * Impossibly epic, brain-expanding, life-affirming and profound. You'll never see humanity the same way again. -- Ian Dunt, author of <i>How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't</i> 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-brush analysis. * The Arts Desk *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Pan Macmillan
Target group
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 196 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 34 mm
Weight
344 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5290-9595-1 (9781529095951)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
04/2024
Picador
€18.49
Available for download
Person
Dorian Lynskey has written about music, politics, film and books for publications including The Guardian, The Observer, The i Paper, BBC Culture, GQ, MOJO, Empire, Billboard, The New Statesman, The Spectator, the Los Angeles Times and Literary Review. He is the author of 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs (2011), Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World (2024) and The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell's 1984 (2019), which was longlisted for both the Orwell Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize. He co-hosts the hit podcasts Origin Story and Oh God, What Now? and has co-written three Origin Story books (Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory, all 2024) with his co-host Ian Dunt. He is on the editorial board of George Orwell Studies and is one of the judges for the Orwell Society/NUJ Young Journalists Award.