MARK O'CONNELL is the author of To Be a Machine, which was awarded the 2019 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize and short-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Slate, and The Guardian. He lives in Dublin with his family.
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
NPR • Esquire • The Guardian • Washington Independent Review of
Books
"There is fertile territory between the terror [Notes from an
Apocalypse] articulates and the faltering, yet still revolving,
world in which we suddenly live. Its success is also testament to
its author’s literary flair, psychological acuity, and evergreen
eschatological meditations. Which is to say: It is smart, funny,
irreverent, and philosophically rich."
—The Wall Street Journal
"A fitting travelogue for our stationary moment...O’Connell’s
'future-dread' haltingly yields to faith in humanity’s resilience,
resourcefulness, and capacity for cooperation."
—The New Yorker
“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
"Brilliant...O’Connell excels at portraying the colorful characters
who shine on an apocalyptic stage."
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“A gonzo travelogue meets philosophical meditation on the
impermanence of human life in the age of climate decline…Deeply
funny and life-affirming, with a warm, generous outlook even on the
most challenging of subjects.”
—Esquire
"In a chain of charming, anxious, and tender essays, O'Connell
examines his own apocalyptic frame of mind…Notes from An Apocalypse
is a reminder to ask what else we can be—and for whom—in the
meantime."
—NPR
“[A] poet laureate of human frailty, quixoticism, and creativity as
they manifest in the technologic age.”
—The Millions
"Smart and surprisingly fun...A thoughtful reflection on why we
prepare for the end of everything."
—GQ
“O’Connell’s prose is lucid and elegant [and] for a book on
anxiety, apocalypse, and death, it’s very funny…. O’Connell’s
personal conclusion, orbiting the purpose he finds in love for his
wife and young children, is deeply moving.”
—Volume 1 Brooklyn
"A timely tour of preparing for the worst...Notes From an
Apocalypse isn’t meant to be a response to any particular event;
it’s an exploration of a sensibility...A funny,
self-deprecating inquiry into [O'Connell's] own complicity."
—The New York Times
“O’Connell’s book reaffirms something that feels endangered—it’s
still worthwhile to reject nihilism and turn toward joy.”
—Wired
"Both wildly funny and oddly moving."
—Ed Caesar, The Guardian
"An eerily prescient mix of confession, political critique,
meditation and comic monologue on living in the face of
death... In this reflective, hilarious and disturbing
page-turner, O’Connell makes a compelling case that connecting with
nature and each other is the best way to calm our apocalyptic
dread—and it might even increase our prospects of avoiding the
worst."
—Nature
“O’Connell is a wry and skeptical stand-in for the reader. There is
a comfort in his prose. You get the sense this writer is taking
time to order his experience, to bring coherence to his
anxieties—and, by extension, to some of mine.”
—Boston Globe
"O’Connell has a rare ability to be blokeish and woke, funny and
frightened and sound: this is a profoundly intelligent book."
—Anne Enright, The Guardian
“Life-affirming…A contribution to the doom-and-gloom genre that
might actually cheer you up.”
—Kirkus
"O'Connell is not only a sharp observer but a master at parsing the
various subtexts underneath the surface rhetoric of these
apocalyptic movements. This witty, profound, and beautifully told
story will appeal to doomsday worriers and nonworriers alike."
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Relatable, often funny, and ultimately hopeful…A
more-than-companionable guide, O'Connell sets out to understand how
we live under constant threat of climate change and political
terror, and finds that the answer is, more or less, we do.”
—Booklist
“A fascinating insight into a species obsessed with its own
demise—and into the ways humankind is trying to confront the
hard-to-bear reality of climate change…Oddly uplifting.”
—The Economist
“Delightful…A wryly amusing tour of the end of the world.”
—Financial Times
“A wise meditation on social collapse and those preoccupied with
the thought of it…The book is full of wry humor, and O’Connell is
an earnest, self-effacing narrator.”
—Washington Independent Review of Books
“O’Connell’s tender, amused evocation of father love is one of the
best things about the book and a vivid reminder of how high the
stakes are...Imagine a cross between Bill Bryson and David Foster
Wallace.”
—The Times (UK)
“The brilliance of this book lies in the analysis. O’Connell is
bitingly clever...[But] the best parts of the book are the personal
ones...This is ultimately, surprisingly, a hopeful book...It is
brilliantly done.”
—Sunday Times (UK)
“It can’t be overstated what witty, thoughtful company O’Connell is
when exploring these peculiarly 21st-century dilemmas.“
—Daily Mail (UK)
"A book that’s fretful, wise, and funny, and often all three in the
space of a paragraph…[O’Connell] is doing good work in difficult
times. He offers us hope as well as black humour."
—Daily Telegraph (Ireland)
"One hell of a funny book. A beautiful writer with a keenly honed
sense of self-deprecation and the absurd, the tangents he wanders
off on are just as fascinating as the subjects he meets…A
must-read."
—Irish Independent (Ireland)
"Mark O'Connell's voice is funny, charming, and humane, even as he
contemplates the grimmest outcomes of the 21st century climate
catastrophe. Notes from an Apocalypse is funny and endlessly
thought-provoking, like Dante's Inferno, if Hell was full of
libertarian Tech bros, YouTube survivalists and guys who are really
into extreme camping."
—Colin Barrett, author of Young Skins
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