The End of the World

by Lewis H. Lapham, Editor; Introduction by Simon Schama

• ISBN13: 9780312252649
• ISBN10: 0312252641
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2000-05-17
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Summary

In this fascinating collection of works by such diverse chroniclers as Plato, Thucydides, da Vinci, and Picasso, famous episodes of human tragedy are recounted by those who lived them. Jack London describes the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. A Bolshevik watches the Winter Palace Fall in 1917. 19 illustrations.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
Simon Schama
Foreword: ``The Wreck of Time'' (I)	xvii
PART I: The Ruins of Empires
Shurrupak	3	(6)
Epic of Gilgamesh
Sodom	9	(2)
Genesis
Atlantis, Plato	11	(3)
Timaeus
Troy, Virgil	14	(3)
Aeneid
Jerusalem	17	(3)
Isaiah
Melos, Thucydides	20	(4)
The History of the Peloponnesian War
Carthage, Polybius	24	(1)
Roman History
Rome, Lucretius	25	(2)
On the Nature of Things
Rome, Lucan	27	(3)
The Civil War
Jerusalem	30	(2)
Mark
Rome, Suetonius, On Nero	32	(2)
Jerusalem, Josephus	34	(8)
The Jewish War
Pompeii, Pliny, Vesuvius Erupts	42	(4)
Armageddon	46	(1)
John
Rome, Procopius	47	(3)
History of the Wars
Rome, Saint Augustine	50	(1)
City of God
Oengus of Clonenagh, Poem	51	(1)
Ireland After the Vikings, Anonymous Poem	52	(1)
Jerusalem, Fulcher of Chartres	52	(3)
Chronicle
Joachim of Fiore, Letter to All the Faithful	55	(3)
Beziers, Guillaume de Tudele	58	(2)
Crusade Against the Albigensians
Florence, Giovanni Boccaccio	60	(6)
Decameron
Ibn Khaldun	66	(3)
The Muqaddimah
Constantinople, Ducas	69	(4)
Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks
Francois Villon	73	(6)
``Another Ballade''
PART II: The Fall of Nations
Leonardo da Vinci	79	(1)
Notebooks
Christopher Columbus	80	(4)
Book of Prophecies
Hispaniola, Bartolome de Las Casas	84	(3)
A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies
Rome, Luigi Guicciardini	87	(7)
The Sack of Rome
Nostradamus	94	(1)
Oracles
William Shakespeare	95	(2)
Richard II
John Donne	97	(2)
Holy Sonnet
Sir Thomas Browne	99	(3)
Religio Medici
London, Anonymous, Beheading of Charles I	102	(3)
London, Daniel Defoe	105	(5)
A Journal of the Plague Year
Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards	110	(4)
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
London, Anonymous, The Earthquake	114	(3)
Voltaire	117	(3)
Candide
Essaka, Equiano Olaudah	120	(5)
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
Yorktown, Lord Charles Cornwallis and George Washington, Letters	125	(6)
Paris, Marie Antoinette, Letters	131	(2)
Paris, Marie Antoinette's Last Supper	133	(2)
Paris, Robespierre, Address to the National Convention	135	(2)
Edmund Burke, ``A Tremendous Unformed Spectre''	137	(4)
Thomas Robert Malthus	141	(3)
An Essay on the Principle of Population
Mary Shelley	144	(3)
The Last Man
Percy Bysshe Shelley	147	(1)
``Ozymandias''
The Treaty of New Echota	148	(1)
Cherokee Nation, Evan Jones, ``On the Trail of Tears''	149	(3)
Ireland, News Accounts and Letters, The Irish Famine	152	(3)
Charles Darwin	155	(3)
On the Origin of Species
Richmond, Burton N. Harrison, Jefferson Davis' Capture	158	(7)
Mary Chesnut, Fall of Richmond	165	(2)
Richmond, George Cary Eggleston	167	(2)
A Rebel's Recollections
Karl Marx	169	(3)
Das Kapital
Paris, Robert Sencourt	172	(4)
The Life of Empress Eugenie
Paris, Archibald Forbes, Dispatches to the London	176	(8)
Daily News
``Ghost Dance Song''	184	(2)
C.P. Cavafy, ``Waiting for the Barbarians''	186	(5)
PART III: The Twentieth Century: The End in a Void
San Francisco, Jack London, Dispatch to Collier's Weekly	191	(5)
Henry Adams, Entropy	196	(4)
Louvain, Richard Harding Davis, Dispatch to the New York Tribune	200	(4)
The Hindenburg Trench, Siegfried Sassoon	204	(5)
St. Petersburg, John Reed, Seizure of the Winter Palace	209	(5)
Oswald Spengler	214	(1)
The Decline of the West
Count Harry Kessler, Revolution in Berlin	215	(7)
Tokyo, London Spectator, Earthquake	222	(1)
New York, The New Yorker, Crash of '29	223	(1)
Sigmund Freud, The Death Instinct	224	(4)
H. L. Mencken, The Great Depression	228	(1)
Martha's Vineyard, Henry Beetle Hough, Epitaph	229	(13)
Auschwitz, Tadeusz Borowski, ``This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen''	230	(12)
Auschwitz, Primo Levi	242	(5)
Survival in Auschwitz
Hiroshima, John Hersey	247	(4)
Hiroshima
Nagasaki, William L. Laurence, Dispatch to The New York Times	251	(6)
Hal Boyle, Washington Under the Bomb	257	(3)
Rachel Carson	260	(4)
Silent Spring
Phnom Penh, Haing S. Ngor, The Khmer Rouge	264	(5)
Peter Schneider, Collapse of the Berlin Wall	269	(3)
Francis Fukuyama, ``The End of History?'' 1993-1996	272	(10)
Time/CNN Poll, Second Coming of Jesus Christ	274	(1)
Atlantic Monthly, Newsstand Blurb	274	(1)
Bill Clinton, On ``The Coming Anarchy''	274	(1)
Books in Print, ``The End of ...''	275	(1)
The Rapture Index	276	(2)
Is Bill Gates the Next Antichrist?	278	(1)
Press Releases, The End Is Nearish!	279	(3)
End Paper: ``Predicted Dates for the End of the World''	282	(3)
Afterword: ``The Wreck of Time'' (II)	285	(4)
Sources	289