The End of the World as We Know It
, by Elisa Gabbert. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. 272 pages.
Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time
, by Ben Ehrenreich. Counterpoint, 2020. 336 pages.
Infrastructures of Apocalypse: American Literature and the Nuclear Complex
, by Jessica Hurley. University of Minnesota Press, 2020. 301 pages.
IT’S HARD to escape the apocalypse these days. Temperatures are rising. The far right is resurgent around the world. A pandemic has killed millions and intensified local and global divisions between rich and poor. The feelings attending such events unbounded anxiety, fear of the world’s collapse, a pervading sense of total doom are often characterized as apocalyptic.