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The End is Always Near

Apocalyptic Moments from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses

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The End is Always Near

By: Dan Carlin
Narrated by: Dan Carlin
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Summary

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Do tough times create tougher people? Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology ever peak or regress? And why, since the dawn of time, has it always seemed as though death and destruction are waiting just around the corner?

Combining his trademark thrilling, expansive storytelling with rigorous history and thought experiment, Dan Carlin connects past with future to explore the tipping points of collapsing civilisations – from the plague to nuclear war.

Looking across every brush with apocalypse, crisis and collapse, this book also weighs, knowing all we do about human patterns, whether our world is likely to become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore.

FROM THE CREATOR OF THE AWARD-WINNING, 100+ MILLION DOWNLOAD PODCAST HARDCORE HISTORY

Civilisation Europe Military Weapons & Warfare World War Imperialism Imperial Japan Middle Ages Ancient History Middle East

Critic Reviews

‘Carlin puts the 'hardcore' in Hardcore History by focusing his narratives on the most violent and dramatic moments in human history, filling his show with colorful anecdotes that were most likely left out of your high school history class.’
Time
‘A master of storytelling, Dan Carlin uses vivid detail and intuitive empathy to imagine what it was like to live through the end of the world … Carlin's engaging and accessible style invites us to ponder the rise and fall of civilizations and ask where we are headed. The end of the world is not merely a catastrophe that waits for us down the road; it is a ghost that haunts the places we've already been.’
Mike Duncan, New York Times bestselling author of The Storm Before the Storm
‘This is the perfect thought experiment for anyone who believes the world is doomed, if only to remind them of one essential reality: the world has always, always seemed doomed…It feels odd to classify a book about barbarians and flu pandemics and the morality of nuclear war as fun, but that's the single best modifier for The End is Always Near. It's an apocalyptic discotheque.’
Chuck Klosterman, author of But What If We're Wrong?
‘For podcast fanatics, each new release is akin to the Super Bowl … Host Dan Carlin, a former radio broadcaster, brings both passion and showmanship as he unspools historical narratives with a flair for tension and intensity.’
AV Club
‘Walking listeners through Operation Barbarossa, the German attempt to capture Moscow, the Battle of Stalingrad, and Germany's ouster from the Soviet Union, Carlin is a wide-eyed, colorful guide to a dreadful story.’
Slate
‘Carlin serves as a notable example of… a person who can discuss issues deeply and idiosyncratically.’
Los Angeles Times
All stars
Most relevant
I’ve become a fan of Dan Carlin and his hard-core history podcasts. This book does not disappoint. It’s extremely timely to think about all the times in history that civilisations have been wiped out and ours is perched on the precipice. We have the threat of nuclear war and climate change involving resisting sea levels. New epidermic’s of infections are also possible. We have lived through 70 years of peace but history shows that all good things must come to an end. Dan Carlin make the Clarion call to wake up and behave more clearly than our predecessors.

Timely and scary

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Can't get enough of Dan's passionate and engaging method of delivering sometimes extremely complex and detailed information. As a huge fan of his podcasts the Audiobook version of this book was a must , however I'm sure I would have read it in his style either way. People who aren't familiar with him should definitely give this a read/listen , he's one of the all time historical and political greats ! Definitely will be reading this more than a few times ...

Any fan of Dan Carlin will absolutely love this!

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The master of the Hard core history podcasts delivers a great walk through time, detailing humanities resilience and recovery from extinction events, classifying the threats and comparing the changing times by creating viewpoint from the moments in history and modern hindsight. A excellent audiobook.

Listen and learn

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This audiobook of The End Is Always Near, read and written by Dan Carlin, is worth the time of anyone who contemplates the outcomes of past historical cataclysms, as well as the implications for future ones.

Any existing fan of Dan Carlin won't need to be recommended this - as they will already know this is a must have and should be listened to as soon as possible.

Tremendous and thought provoking!

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A great compliment to his podcast works. Im a huge fan of the old times and Dan's voice is the best at story telling as it is. Awesome book start to finish

Dan Carlin is always informative and confronting.

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