The End Of The World As We Know It, New Book From NYU Press, Examines Doomsday Scenarios & Apocalypse In America

With the approach of the year 2000 and the highly visible proliferations of doomsday cults in recent years – "Heaven’s Gate" just being the most recent, apocalyptic anxiety has reached a fever pitch.

The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America (350 pages/15 illustrations/$30, cloth), published recently by the New York University Press, examines the doomsday scenarios and apocalyptic predictions of visionaries, televangelists, survivalists, and various other endtime enthusiasts, as well as popular culture, film, music, fashion, and humor. Author Daniel Wojcik, associate professor of English and folklore at the University of Oregon, sheds new light on America’s fascination with worldly destruction and transformation.

From religious tomes to current folk prophecies, recorded history reveals a plethora of narratives predicting or showcasing the end of the world. Whether it will occur as part of a divinely ordained plan or as a result of nuclear catastrophe,extraterrestrial invasion, or gradual environmental decay, millions of Americans today believe the end of the world is inevitable.

In The End of the World as We Know It Wojcik 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.

Concluding, Wojcik writes, "As end-of-the-millennium apocalyptic expectation intensifies and new doomsday dates are forecast, it is worth remembering that the end of the world has been predicted many times. Even though humanity has survived every one of these predicted doomsdays, current apocalyptic speculation has a ring of plausibility, given the potential disasters and enormousness of the problems that confront humanity at the turn of the millennium…Steeped in images of catastrophe that reflect an awareness of our own endings and the widespread feeling that the world itself may be dying, apocalyptic beliefs allay fears of human extinction, provide the hope of continuity and renewal, and give expression to the desire for a meaningful narrative underlying individual existence and human history."

Daniel Wojcik is the author of Punk and Neo-Tribal Body Art.

9/25/97