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Apocalypse by Lizzie Wade (Harper, 2025)

An apocalypse is always both an ending and a beginning. Lizzie Wade charts past apocalypses, correcting glib narratives that too often presume neat binaries of winners and losers, or assert that apocalypses were always complete. In fact, what happens during and after an apocalypse is never straightforward, and a great deal of adapting—and surviving—takes place amid the ruins. Wade shows how we live in a post-apocalyptic world, one wrought by colonial atrocities of which the consequences are still unfolding. But within that acknowledgement is a hint of power: if we choose to heed the lessons of the apocalypses of the past, we just might learn how to survive the one we’re in now—and all the ones ahead.