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Notes from an Apocalypse
- A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back
- Narrated by: Mark O'Connell
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
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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?
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Critic reviews
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)
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By: Johny Pitts
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The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
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Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
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1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
- A Memoir
- By: Ai Weiwei, Allan H. Barr - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp.
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This book changed my life
- By Johnny Nopolis on 08-16-22
By: Ai Weiwei, and others
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Childhood's End
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer, Robert J. Sawyer - introduction
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city - intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began.
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Food for Thought
- By Kindle Customer on 11-17-08
By: Arthur C. Clarke
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Earning the Rockies
- How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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As a boy, Robert D. Kaplan listened to his truck-driver father's evocative stories about traveling across America as a young man, travels in which he learned to understand the country from a ground-level perspective. In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan undertakes his own cross-country journey to recapture an appreciation and understanding of American geography that is often lost in the jet age.
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Magnificent book that found a great narrator!
- By BotakTree on 03-09-17
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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Ishmael
- An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
- By: Daniel Quinn
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
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One of the most beloved and best-selling novels of spiritual adventure ever published, Ishmael has earned a passionate following. This special 25th anniversary edition features a new foreword and afterword by the author.
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Unabridged PLEASE!
- By Eric on 01-12-08
By: Daniel Quinn
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The Odd Woman and the City
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same.
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Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
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Terraform
- Building a Better World
- By: Propaganda
- Narrated by: Propaganda
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In this deep, challenging, and thoughtful book, Propaganda looks at the ways in which our world is broken. Using the metaphor of terraforming - creating a livable world out of an inhospitable one - he shows how we can begin to reshape our homes, friendships, communities, and politics.
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My favorite audio book!
- By RobsRecs on 06-20-21
By: Propaganda
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A Bend in the River
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.
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Beautiful, insightful, troubling
- By Lawrence on 01-15-05
By: V. S. Naipaul
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Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All
- A New Zealand Story
- By: Christina Thompson
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man.
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a beautiful story
- By Pumpkin99 on 12-24-22
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Wanting
- The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
- By: Luke Burgis
- Narrated by: Luke Burgis, Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Gravity affects every aspect of our physical being, but there’s a psychological force just as powerful - yet almost nobody has heard of it. It’s responsible for bringing groups of people together and pulling them apart, making certain goals attractive to some and not to others, and fueling cycles of anxiety and conflict. In Wanting, Luke Burgis draws on the work of French polymath René Girard to bring this hidden force to light and reveals how it shapes our lives and societies.
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One of the most important books you'll ever read
- By chris boutte on 06-14-21
By: Luke Burgis
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The Republic of Imagination
- America in Three Books
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination.
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Love
- By Rebecca on 05-29-16
By: Azar Nafisi
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Art Is Life
- Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night
- By: Jerry Saltz
- Narrated by: Jerry Saltz, Mark Bramhall
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Jerry Saltz is one of our most-watched writers about art and artists and a passionate champion of the importance of art in our shared cultural life. Since the 1990s he has been an indispensable cultural voice: Witty and provocative, he has attracted contemporary listeners to fine art as few critics have.
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WRONG for audio program
- By Karen Lehrer on 11-07-22
By: Jerry Saltz
What listeners say about Notes from an Apocalypse
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- jordan
- 07-19-21
Gorgeously written
A beautiful testament to anxiety and the human condition in our modern era of worry. Mark’s narration of matched well with his mastery of prose. I recommend this one for sure.
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- Mary Mumma Brown
- 04-17-20
Good Book But Flawed
The author does not have a good grasp of the time frame for Abrupt Climate Change:
we have 10-15 years left on this planet! Read the Science.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Samara
- 09-21-20
loved it!
This is such a great book. I loved the irony behind some of the first end-of-the-world experiences at the beginning and the honesty of the writer. Really enjoyed the last chapter more on a personal level. A book of rare perfection!
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- Kevin Palmer
- 05-09-24
Not Bad, Not Great
The first half was better than the second half. The second half sounds more like excerpts from the authors journal than an examination of the end of days. Nevertheless, his insight was familiar.
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- Pauline Kenny
- 07-16-20
Very interesting book about apocalypse groups
The author looks at several groups preparing for the apocalypse and gives his own thoughts on events. Beautifully written and a thought-provoking read. Highly recommended.
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- Tom
- 11-03-23
Varying perspectives on the impact of Climate Change
Reading this book after a couple of terrifying accounts of the impending threats to American Democracy was an interesting experience. I wasn’t sure of Mark O’Connell’s take on the issue though his use of the word Apocalypse and the repeated mention of John of Patmos did give me pause.
I was relieved to see that while he was seriously concerned about the threats Climate Change represented, his tale would focus on the way he and others reacted to the coming End of Days. His interviews with Preppers, Survival Shelter Salesmen, Mars Colonizers, Tech Billionaires, and Back to the Earth types, et al were fascinating. In each his own opinions were evident in irony or lack thereof as he deals with each.
Throughout we see these people through his eyes and he moves the reader to a better understanding of the impact he sees coming as the storms, fires, floods and other horrors the environmental damage our lifestyles have caused.
This is an interesting and important read. Four Stars. ****
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- rachel cartwright
- 08-15-22
Who would listen to this ?
I started this book as I’m really interested in climate change issues but had to stop listening mid way thru chapter 3 - I found the narrative offensive to women in several places and reached my limit here. I realize the author prob sees this as part of his story to tell but In
The end I was just offended by it . At some point you can give the impression without all the details - or maybe you left some out and this is already toned down ? Then why give this guy a platform ?
Left wondering who would read and enjoy this book. I can’t imagine many women would be among his readers
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1 person found this helpful
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- Patrick Fields
- 06-11-23
Author need to get over himself.
Oh boy. The author although seemed very impressed with The sound of his own voice he kept on exuding the sense of guilt and malaise that his caucasianness was the sole arbiter of destruction upon. The planet and that if you were a Western European or their descendants that it is their fault for the destruction and capitulation of all cultures and resources that. Are? Leading. To the ultimate demise of our civilization. He is very smug and condescending towards people who have different views or different ideas than he he does not realize that not only is it but it is. A team effort upon the current situation of the earth it was very trifling to get through and I would not recommend
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