Anyone familiar with the popular historical podcast, “Hardcore History,“ will be familiar with the author of this book. In fact, some of the content for this volume was revisited from various episodes of the podcast itself.
Let me begin by saying that I “read“ this book via audiobook and it was read by the author. If you are a fan of his podcast I suggest you do the same. Having Dan Carlin read this book added a significant amount of enjoyment for me.
The premise of the book is simple. The human race has a propensity for self-destructive behavior and throughout time has faced massive apocalyptic, extinction threatening events. Carlin engages various civilization crashes from the past as well as plagues that wiped out significant portions of the human population.
These earlier discussions build towards more modern predicaments that human beings face in our times. Environmental catastrophe and pandemics are in view as well as mutually assured destruction through global, thermonuclear war. This later discussion, the potential for us the nuke ourselves back into a New Stone Age, appears to be the major concern of the book.
Strengths
One of the major strengths of this work is its realism. Carlin is clear that catastrophes have fallen upon the human race in the past and will almost certainly persist into the future. In discussing the collapse of the great civilizations of the Bronze Age, Carlin shows that people that were once at the top of the food chain can quickly disappear from the face of the earth. Furthermore, our vulnerability to natural phenomenon from the climate or from infectious pathogens comes through very clear in the volume. I am guessing that the publication of this work to coincide with the global Covid 19 pandemic was not coincidental. It reads today as ever so relevant for our moment.
Additionally, the audiobook has the strength of Carlin’s style of narration which has made his podcast such a runaway success. He possesses an interested playfulness along with a blood earnestness to his reading. This combination makes his audio riveting.
Carlin also clearly does his homework as all of his audio works contain rich source quotations. This book is no exception. The readings of first hand accounts of mass bombings as well as the powerful effects of nuclear weapons makes the reader pause and reflect upon our apocalyptic potential.
Finally, I enjoyed this book for its rather secular eschatology and vision of how various ages, and even the human race itself, might end itself on the earth. As a Christian, I hold a different view of the end of all things, albeit apocalyptic in nature. The commonalities as well as the divergences I find in these two views made me more hopeful about the future I see coming as a Christian.
Weaknesses
The main weakness I found with this volume is the rather loose unity of the overall book. This is likely to be expected from a project that seems to stitch together smaller audio works even though they travel similar themes and genres. The book tends to jump and lurch a bit from chapter to chapter.
The other weakness I found was the overall tone of pessimism throughout. As a student of history and human nature, Carlin is certainly justified for having a rather dubious view of our future. He does exhibit some hope that we might be able to change fast enough to diverge from our past track record. I did not find his hopefulness to be persuasive.
Conclusion
Whether you are familiar with the Hardcore History Podcast or not, this book offers a great invitation into the historical storytelling of Dan Carlin. This is enough for me to recommend this volume to everyone. If you are a fan of the podcast there is plenty in this book that you will enjoy.
Finally, it seems human beings are tempted either towards an excessive pessimism or a Pollyanna like optimism when looking our future. It is easy, after all, to get caught up on the horns of the human dilemma. We can tend to focus on the dark side or the bright side of human beings in our outlooks. I find a better path in what G.K. Chesterton called an irrational optimism in his book Orthodoxy:
No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.
G.K. Chesterton, “Chapter 5 - The Flag of the World” in Orthodoxy. Many versions available online with Project Gutenberg here http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/130
In reading this book, I did so as a Christian. As such I am able to stare into the darkness of history, while maintaining a hope for the greater light to come. Such hope is necessary to the human condition and to work for the brighter day. Without such hope in the cosmic transformation of all things, I would come away from this book with quite a dim view of our future. Perhaps that is a a necessary starting point for us to have some longing for a different ending to the human story. Is it all simply to be gloom and doom and extinction by our own hands? Or should we long for a greater story of a redemption to come in the last days?