The Last Apocalypse

Accomplished historical author James Reston, Jr., presents the enthralling saga of how the Christian kingdoms converted, conquered, and slaughtered their way to dominance in Europe as the year 1000 approached. Through Reston's brilliant narrative and engaging portraits of the unforgettable historical characters who embodied the struggle for the soul of Europe, students are introduced to a pivotal period in history during which an old order was crumbling, and terrifying, confusing new ideas were gaining hold in the populace. From the righteous fury of the Viking queen Sigrid the Strong-Minded, who burned unwanted suitors alive; to the brilliant but too-cunning Moor, al-Mansur the Illustrious Victor; to the aptly named English king Ethelred the Unready; to the abiding genius of the age, Pope Sylvester II—warrior kings and concubine empresses, maniacal warriors and religious zealots bring this stirring period to life.

An enthralling popular history of how the threatened Christian kingdoms of Europe converted, conquered, and slaughtered their way to dominance at the turn of the last millennium. of photos.

With the turn of the century approaching, talk of the apocalypse ran rampant. In The Last Apocalypse, James Reston reminds us that such talk is nothing new. At the previous turn of the millennium, Vikings, Moors, and Hungarian Magyars besieged Europe with wanton cruelty and violence, spreading fear and destruction wherever they went and leading many to believe that the end of the world was near. Such colorful characters as Sigrid the Haughty, Svein Forkbeard, Ethelred the Unready, and Al-Mansor the Illustrious Victor were the heroes and villains of the era.

Accomplished historical author James Reston, Jr., presents the enthralling saga of how the Christian kingdoms converted, conquered, and slaughtered their way to dominance in Europe as the year 1000 approached. Through Reston's brilliant narrative and engaging portraits of the unforgettable historical characters who embodied the struggle for the soul of Europe, students are introduced to a pivotal period in history during which an old order was crumbling, and terrifying, confusing new ideas were gaining hold in the populace. From the righteous fury of the Viking queen Sigrid the Strong-Minded, who burned unwanted suitors alive; to the brilliant but too-cunning Moor, al-Mansur the Illustrious Victor; to the aptly named English king Ethelred the Unready; to the abiding genius of the age, Pope Sylvester II—warrior kings and concubine empresses, maniacal warriors and religious zealots bring this stirring period to life.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

This propulsive post-apocalyptic thriller “in which Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None collides with Stephen King’s The Shining” (NPR) follows a group of survivors stranded at a hotel as the world descends into nuclear war and the body of a young girl is discovered in one of the hotel’s water tanks. Jon thought he had all the time in the world to respond to his wife’s text message: I miss you so much. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you. But as he’s waiting in the lobby of the L’Hotel Sixieme in Switzerland after an academic conference, still mulling over how to respond to his wife, he receives a string of horrifying push notifications. Washington, DC, has been hit with a nuclear bomb, then New York, then London, and finally Berlin. That’s all he knows before news outlets and social media goes black—and before the clouds on the horizon turn orange. Two months later, there are twenty survivors holed up at the hotel, a place already tainted by its strange history of suicides and murders. Jon and the rest try to maintain some semblance of civilization. But when he goes up to the roof to investigate the hotel’s worsening water quality, he is shocked to discover the body of a young girl floating in one of the tanks, and is faced with the terrifying possibility that there might be a killer among the group. As supplies dwindle and tensions rise, Jon becomes obsessed with discovering the truth behind the girl’s death. In this “brilliantly executed...chilling and extraordinary” post-apocalyptic mystery, “the questions Jameson poses—who will be with you at the end of the world, and what kind of person will you be?—are as haunting as the plot itself.” (Emily St. John Mandel, nationally bestselling author of Station Eleven).

"It’s legitimate SF, and it’s ‘mainstream,’ and it’s metafiction: I don’t know anyone else doing quite what Lain is doing; fascinating work, moving, strikingly honest, powerful.”—Rich Horton, Locus Magazine Gore Vidal meets Philip K. Dick in this collection of “lit-fabulist” stories. Douglas Lain’s work has been attracting high profile attention throughout the genre, and this collection features some of his finest and most controversial fiction. These stories present electric messiahs, identity constructs, the Beatles, and even nuclear Armageddon as comic foils for Lain’s everyman characters. Here is an America where the packets of Sea Monkeys that arrive in the mail contain secret messages and the girl next door can breathe underwater. With Last Week’s Apocalypse, Douglas Lain arrives with a punch line and a warning.

In this insightful book, an underwater archaeologist and survival coach shows how understanding the collapse of civilizations can help us prepare for a troubled future. Pandemic, climate change, or war: our era is ripe with the odor of doomsday. In movies, books, and more, our imaginations run wild with visions of dreadful, abandoned cities and returning to the land in a desperate attempt at survival. In The Next Apocalypse, archaeologist Chris Begley argues that we completely misunderstand how disaster works. Examining past collapses of civilizations, such as the Maya and Rome, he argues that these breakdowns are actually less about cataclysmic destruction than they are about long processes of change. In short: it’s what happens after the initial uproar that matters. Some people abandon their homes and neighbors; others band together to start anew. As we anticipate our own fate, Begley tells us that it was communities, not lone heroes, who survived past apocalypses—and who will survive the next. Fusing archaeology, survivalism, and social criticism, The Next Apocalypse is an essential read for anxious times.