The creator of the wildly popular award-winning podcast Hardcore History looks at some of the apocalyptic moments from the past as a way to frame the challenges of the future.
Do tough times create tougher people? Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology or capabilities ever peak or regress? No one knows the answers to such questions, but no one asks them in a more interesting way than Dan Carlin.
In The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin looks at questions and historical events that force us to consider what sounds like fantasy; that we might suffer the same fate that all previous eras did. Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore? The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone.
Combining his trademark mix of storytelling, history and weirdness Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colorful ways. At the same time the questions he asks us to consider involve the most important issue imaginable: human survival. From the collapse of the Bronze Age to the challenges of the nuclear era the issue has hung over humanity like a persistent Sword of Damocles.
Inspired by his podcast, The End is Always Near challenges the way we look at the past and ourselves. In this absorbing compendium, Carlin embarks on a whole new set of stories and major cliffhangers that will keep readers enthralled. Idiosyncratic and erudite, offbeat yet profound, The End is Always Near examines issues that are rarely presented, and makes the past immediately relevant to our very turbulent present.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
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"Anyone who knows and follows Dan Carlin's Hardcore History and Common Sense Podcast would say it's a cliche that he is an awesome story-teller and is capable of profound and insightful ideas. Repeatedly denying he is 'a historian' - he nonetheless researches his topics exhaustively and bends over backwards to avoid judgementalism. This book is great. The reason for the less than five star rating - is that anyone who listens to his history podcasts can quickly identify that the book is basically a collection of left-overs that did not make it into the podcasts. I felt that rather than having a cohesive storyline, I was listening to Dan provide a series of addendums to the history podcasts that he has put out over the years (each of which is a stand-alone masterpiece). I'm not sure if someone unfamiliar with Dan's style would enjoy it as those of us who are, but on the other hand those who ARE familiar with him - I'm sure - will identify each of his podcast topics in the chapters and see how these are additional insights that could have fit in somewhere in the podcasts but for whatever reason didn't make it. "
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yoni (4 out of 5 stars)