The portentous title of this book, The End of the World: An Annotated Bibliography, is surely a title to end all titles! How can one possibly, one might ask, write about the end of the world until the world has ended? Who would be there to write it, or read it? A logical impossibility. Well, 3,482 books are listed here, and that’s excluding scientific works on eco‐disasters, planets colliding and the sun growing cold, even “hundreds of other titles included elsewhere”, so obviously I’m wrong! “What the works in this collection have in common is that all are convinced the world is coming to an end, one way or another, and that this End constitutes a divine judgment or is somehow preordained” (Preface). Most of the works are openly Bible‐based and the great majority are Christian, though Jewish and Islamic works, plus a few other religious works are included. Other areas covered are pyramidology, Lost tribes of Israel, astrology, UFOlogy, even fiction.
The book is arranged in four chronological sections: pre‐1800, 1800‐1910, 1910‐1970, and 1970 and later. The date divisions are somewhat arbitrary, admits the author, though 1910 “does lie in the period between the predominantly post‐millennial nineteenth century and the emergence of the fundamentalist movement in the twentieth, when premillennialism became the dominant view.” Heavy stuff this, and the user is grateful to the author for a detailed introductory guide to the esoterica of eschatology, apocalyptic literature,date‐setting by prophetic numbers, the history of books about the end of the world, “Historicist, Preterist, and Futurist Interpretations”, and “A‐mill, Pre‐mill, and Post‐mill” literature (“mill” = millennial).
After this somewhat sombre surrealism, it is a librarianly relief to enter the familiar and friendly territory of a first‐rate annotated bibliography. Each work is briefly yet adequately cited, although wordy titles are given full rein. The annotations are basically descriptive and one is impressed with the diligence shown by the author, particularly after reading the numerous weird and wacky works he had to contend with. Entry 342 is by Samuel Davies Baldwin and titled Armageddon; or The Overthrow of Romanism and Monarchy; the Existence of the United States Foretold in the Bible, Its Future Greatness, Invasion by Allied Powers; Annihilation of Monarchy; Expansion into the Millennial Republic; and its Dominion over the Whole World (1854). Its 480 pages include such gems as The Ten Horns of the Beast (Huns, Goths, Vandals, etc.), England as the False Prophet, and the 13 US Colonies as a reflection of the lost tribes of Israel. W.W. Finlay’s Nations in Confusion (1968) is an anti‐communist tract which claims that the UN is the modern Tower of Babel, that communists are infiltrating and brainwashing using beat music with hypnotic rhythms; that the Anglo‐Celto‐Saxon peoples are the true Israel; and that God will supernaturally destroy the Russian‐African invasion of Israel.
When I first saw this book I regarded it with some jocularity ‐ an account of crackpots and weirdo cults ‐ but after sampling this unrelenting diet of arrogance, bigotry, madness and extremes of fantasy, I started to get a little worried. Not that all the entries are extreme: evangelist Billy Graham is here, popular authors such as Watchman Nee and Corrie Ten Boom, astronomer Tycho Brahe, and dear old Nostradamus. Overall, Tom McIver has done us a service by gathering together a significant strain of writing which will be of interest and concern, not just to fellow travellers and religious studies departments, but also to anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and cultural studies people.
The book is dedicated to the author’s daughters who wondered at their father’s preoccupation with the end of the world. He hopes they will realize the importance of trying to understand such beliefs, and why it took him away from them so often. I wonder if they will! Unusually for a reference book review, The End of the World left me wanting more ‐ how hard it is to avoid puns here! Having read 3,500 books on the subject, I was wanting to know what the author made of it all. What does it all amount to? The introduction, despite its inevitable complexity, does a good job in setting the scene, and it usefully concludes with modern day movements such as the Pentecostals, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Worldwide Church of God, but I wanted some further reading! Another thing I missed was a subject approach, an index of groups and affiliations perhaps, with “their” books. Somewhere in here is literature relating to the Branch Dravidians, the Southcottians, the Plymouth Brethren and the Darbyites, and the Israelite Church, but where? The latter is represented by a work by the prophet John Wroe (he of the virgins), but having faced two of his oddly‐dressed latter‐day followers across my enquiry desk a while ago, I assume there are other books on that Church’s beliefs here somewhere.
Still, despite the prophecies of many of the denizens of this bibliography, there would still appear to be time left for me to follow up the leads and images given to me by this extraordinary bibliography. I hope we will hear from the author again.
