Examines contemporary apocalyptic beliefs and their origins From religious tomes to current folk prophesies, recorded history reveals a plethora of narratives predicting or showcasing the end of the world. The incident at Waco, the subway bombing by the Japanese cult Aum Supreme Truth, and the tragedy at Jonestown are just a few examples of such apocalyptic scenarios. And these are not isolated incidents; millions of Americans today believe the end of the world is inevitable, either by a divinely ordained plan, nuclear catastrophe, extraterrestrial invasion, or gradual environmental decay. Examining the doomsday scenarios and apocalyptic predictions of visionaries, televangelists, survivalists, and various other endtimes enthusiasts, as well as popular culture, film, music, fashion, and humor, Daniel Wojcik sheds new light on America's fascination with worldly destruction and transformation. He explores the origins of contemporary apocalyptic beliefs and compares religious and secular apocalyptic speculation, showing us the routes our belief systems have traveled over the centuries to arrive at the dawn of a new millennium. Included in his sweeping examination are premillennial prophecy traditions, prophecies associated with visions of the Virgin Mary, secular ideas about nuclear apocalypse, the transformation of apocalyptic prophecy in the post-Cold War era, and emerging apocalyptic ideas associated with UFOs and extraterrestrials. Timely, yet of lasting importance, The End of the World as We Know It is a comprehensive cultural and historical portrait of an age-old phenomenon and a fascinating guide to contemporary apocalyptic fever.

This book is nothing short of a state-of-the-world address, delivered by a scholar uniquely suited to the task. Immanuel Wallerstein, one of the most prominent social scientists of our time, documents the profound transformations our world is undergoing. With these transformations, he argues, come equally profound changes in how we understand the world. Wallerstein begins his work with an appraisal of significant recent events -- the collapse of the Leninist states, the exhaustion of national liberation movements, the rise of East Asia, challenges to national sovereignty, dangers to the environment, debates about national identity, and the marginalization of migrant populations. Wallerstein places these events and trends in the context of the changing modern world-system as a whole and identifies the historic choices they put before us. The End of the World As We Know It concludes with a crucial analysis of the momentous intellectual challenges to social science as we know it today and suggests possible responses to them.

Looking for an easy-to-understand chronology of the end times? This handy purse- or pocket-sized book contains a detailed end times chart, an outline of the Book of Revelation and a breakdown of end-times events.

Fletcher looks at how relevant and true Bible prophecy is, thereby removing the disconnect between it and the everyday lives of people living in American popular culture.

Welcome to a world controlled by a megalomaniac Lolcat. A world where data pirates, zombies and infobots on surfboards roam free. A world at war over cheese ... When teenager Mikey Malone gets sucked through a wormhole into this parallel world, he discovers a power-crazed corporation is planning to use Earth as a dumping ground for an uncontrollable poisonous algae. It's a race against time for Mikey and his rebel friends to stop the ruthless tyrants from getting their way. A laugh-out-loud-funny new sci-fi series from Costa-shortlisted author Saci Lloyd, perfect for devotees of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams.

The opening years of this decade have been typified by terrorist atrocities such as 9/11; wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq; starvation and disease in Africa; natural disasters such as the Tsunami and the earthquakes in Turkey and Pakistan. For the Christian, none of these should be a surprise. They are the 'signs of the times', Jesus himself described events such as these as 'the beginning of birth pangs' which point to His Second Coming. This book has been written as a guide to the end time prophecies in the Bible in order that the reader may understand events such as the Rapture, the Millennium, the judgement of the nations and Israel and decipher mysterious personalities such as the beast, the antichrist and the false prophet as the return of Christ draws near. Book reviews online: PublishedBestsellers website.

It was the 1950s, a time of calm, a time when all things were new and everything seemed possible. A few years before, a noble war had been won, and now life had returned to normal. For one little boy, however, life had become anything but "normal." To all appearances, he and his family lived an almost idyllic life. The father was a respected professor, the mother a witty and elegant lady, someone everyone loved. They were parents to three bright, smiling children: two boys and a girl. They lived on a sunny street in a small college town nestled neatly in a leafy valley. They gave parties, hosted picnics, went to church—just like their neighbors. To all appearances, their life seemed ideal. But it was, in fact, all appearances. Lineage, tradition, making the right impression—these were matters of great importance, especially to the mother. But behind the facade this family had created lurked secrets so dark, so painful for this one little boy, that his life would never be the same. It is through the eyes of that boy—a grown man now, revisiting that time—that we see this seemingly serene world and watch as it slowly comes completely and irrevocably undone. Beautifully written, often humorous, sometimes sweet, ultimately shocking, this is a son's story of looking back with both love and anger at the parents who gave him life and then robbed him of it, who created his world and then destroyed it. As author Lee Smith, who knew this world and this family, observed, "Alcohol may be the real villain in this pain-permeated, exquisitely written memoir of childhood—but it is also filled with absolutely dead-on social commentary of this very particular time and place. A brave, haunting, riveting book."

Thinking about the end times isn't supposed to terrify you Christians rightly turn to the Bible to make sense of our times. But so often we get the wrong answers because we ask the wrong questions. In The End of the World as You Know It, Matthew L. Halsted challenges common end-times assumptions and points us back to Scripture. Each chapter reevaluates a popular question in light of the Bible's own concerns: Will Christians be raptured? What is the mark of the beast? When we let Scripture direct our questions, we get better—and more hopeful—answers. The Bible was written for us, but not to us. We must bridge the gap between Scripture's ancient context and our own. Reading end-times texts in their ancient context helps us understand our present and future. And when we do, we find that God's word brings peace, not fear and confusion.

Globalization and climate weirding are two of the leading phenomena that challenge and change the way we need to think and act within the planetary community. Modern Western understandings of human beings, animals, and the rest of the natural world and the subsequent technologies built on those understandings have thrown us into an array of social and ecological crises with planetary implications. Earthly Things: Immanence, New Materialisms, and Planetary Thinking, argues that more immanent or planetary ways of thinking and acting have great potential for re-thinking human-technology-animal-Earth relationships and for addressing problems of global climate weirding and other forms of ecological degradation. Older and often-marginalized forms of thought from animisms, shamanisms, and other religious traditions are joined by more recent forms of thinking with immanence such as the universe story, process thought, emergence theory, the new materialisms (NM’s), object-oriented ontologies (OOO’s), affect theory, and queer theory. This book maps out some of the connections and differences between immanent frameworks to provide some eco-intellectual commons for thinking within the planetary community, with a particular emphasis on making connections between more recent theories and older ideas of immanence found in many of the world’s religious traditions. The authors in this volume met and worked together over five years, so the resulting volume reveals sustained and multifaceted perspectives on “thinking and acting with the planet.”