The Apocalypse Is Everywhere: A Popular History of America's Favorite Nightmare

by Anne Rehill

Overview

This wide-ranging exploration of the apocalypse in Western culture seeks to understand how we have come to be so preoccupied with spectacular visions of our own annihilation—offering abundant examples of the changing nature of our imagined destruction, and predisposing readers to discover many more all around them.

The Apocalypse Is Everywhere: A Popular History of America's Favorite Nightmare explores why apocalyptic thinking exists, how it has been manifested in Western culture through the ages, and how it has woven itself so thoroughly into our popular culture today.

Beginning with contemporary apocalyptic expressions, the book demonstrates how surprisingly widespread they are. It then discusses how we inherited them and where they arose. Author Annie Rehill surveys the ancient belief systems from which Christianity evolved, including ancient Judaism and other faiths. She explores the vision outlined in the Book of Revelation and traces the apocalyptic thread through the Middle Ages, across the Reformation and Enlightenment, and to the Americas. Finally, to prove that the Apocalypse is indeed everywhere, Rehill returbans to the present to consider the idea of apocalypse as it occurs in movies, books, comics and graphic novels, games, music, and art, as well asin televangelism and even presidential speeches. Her fascinating scholarship will surely have readers looking about them with new eyes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313354380
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/12/2009
Pages:	281
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Annie Rehill is a freelance writer and editor.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
PART I: UBIQUITOUS CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS
1. Apocalyptic Warnings: From TV to the White House
2. Doomsday Broadcasting on Comedy Central
3. Homer Simpson and the Rapture
4. Party in Hell on South Park
5. Using Revelation as a Template: The Left Behind Series
6. Apocalyptic Brutality: Cormac McCarthy
PART II: HOW WE INHERITED THE BOOK OF REVELATION
7. The Apocalypse Emerges from Ancient Ideas
8. From the Hebrew Distillation to Islamic Interpretations
9. Modern Apocalyptic Source: John's Book of Revelation
10. Christianity Conquers Europe: The Middle Ages
11. Religious Challenges—and Imagining No Apocalypse
12. Christianity and Revelation Cross the Atlantic
PART III: ACTING OUT THE APOCALYPSE IN THE NEW WORLD
13. Apocalypse in Literature and Film
14. More Doomsday Tales
15. Armageddon Hits the Big Screen
16. Eternity in Comics and Graphic Novels
17. Judgment Day in Music and Art
18. TV and Games to the Rescue
19. Apocalyptic Fun in Your Own Backyard
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

This book traces manifestations of the apocalypse of the biblical Book of Revelations in American popular culture. The author first seeks to demonstrate how widespread apocalyptic visions are before turbaning to an exploration of their roots in the Bible and in other religious traditions and surveying their historical development to the present day. She then turbans back to the present, examining occurrences of apocalyptic ideas in movies, books, comics, games, music, art, televangelism, presidential speeches, and elsewhere.” —Reference & Research Book News

From the Publisher