APOCALYPSE is coming your way
Pub date, preorders, and the long awaited cover!
The time has come, friends. I’m thrilled to share that my book APOCALYPSE: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures will be published on May 6, 2025! I’ve been working on this book, my first, in some form since 2018, and it’s been my primary project since 2020. I can’t believe that in a mere three months, it will be out in the world for everyone else to read.
APOCALYPSE uses true stories from archaeology to retell human history as a story of endings, transformations, and new beginnings. For tens of thousands of years, events like plagues, natural disasters, and state collapses have forced us to take stock of who we are and what kinds of societies we want to live in. Apocalypses may destroy old worlds, but they also offer the best chance we have to create new ones.
Here’s the cover! Thank you to designer Darren Haggar, who captured the duality of the book perfectly: before and after, rupture and suture, breaking and healing:
To quote myself from the press release:
As a science journalist, Wade says she “noticed something curious, and more than a little frustrating. Both archaeologists and the general public were fascinated by cataclysmic events in the past—not least because they worried about how such apocalypses would affect humanity in the near future. And yet, the most exciting ideas and discoveries from archaeology hadn’t managed to make inroads into popular consciousness. Whereas archaeologists have long focused on the resilience and survival they find inherent in past apocalypses, popular writing about them focuses almost exclusively on violence, destruction, and dark ages. I’ve personally found so much hope for our future in archaeology’s more accurate, more imaginative, and more humane perspective about how past communities have coped with challenging times, and I conceived of APOCALYPSE to help bring that perspective to a wider audience at a time when we desperately need it.”
As an archaeology writer, I don’t say this lightly: This is the forbidden knowledge about the past they don’t want you to know. For millennia (really—it’s in the book!), the rich and powerful have conspired to conceal how resourceful, creative, and resilient humans beings are, and always have been, when the worst befalls us. We deserve to know the true stories of how our ancestors survived the ends of their worlds, and we need to learn that the same is possible for us. Our future is not one of inevitable decline, but of incredible opportunity.
APOCALYPSE is available for preorder now! The most important thing you can do to support a book is to preorder it. The second most important is to tell all your friends to preorder it. Click through to preorder APOCALYPSE from the big guys:
Or better yet, preorder APOCALYPSE from your local bookstore and request a copy at your library! E-book and audiobook versions will also be available. (If you’re in media and want a digital or physical galley, reply to this email, and I’ll make you sure you get one.)
Here are some kind words about APOCALYPSE from authors I so admire:
Lizzie Wade is an exceptional journalist and a master storyteller. In APOCALYPSE, she peels back the many myths of the present to reveal the true stories of past apocalypses, and perhaps more important, what happened afterward. She reminds us that survival always has been, and still is, possible, and that our world always has been, and still is, a choice. — Ed Yong, author of An Immense World
This book upended my understanding of the ancient world. Wade renders our deep past in vivid prose, teaching me that the collapse of a civilization isn’t always what it seems, and what comes after might not be what we'd assumed. Times of great rupture also bring great possibilities for new ways of living. Collapse can open space for liberation, if we let it. Never has the field of archeology felt so vibrant or vital to we who live now. — Zoë Schlanger, author of The Light Eaters
An extraordinary book. Wade tells the stories of ancient peoples experiencing their own apocalypses with vivacity and tenderness. By showing us the ways in which they were transformed—even in the midst of catastrophe—she invites us to turn away from despair and apathy and embrace the creativity and compassion that has made humans so resilient. — Jennifer Raff, author of Origin and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas
The world has ended many times and usually, amazingly, humans keep going. Rooted in solid science that never loses sight of the human and the possible, this book shows us why good stories and an understanding of history matter more than ever. — Agustín Fuentes, author of The Creative Spark and professor of anthropology at Princeton University
A fascinating dive into the tragedies—and comebacks—of those that came before us. Lizzie Wade combines detailed research with clear writing to bring these historical events to life—they’re stories that will stick with me for a long time. APOCALYPSE shows us the strength of human ingenuity, which we shouldn’t just admire but learn from, so that we can stand up to the problems we face today. — Hannah Ritchie, author of Not the End of the World and Senior Researcher in the Programme for Global Development at the University of Oxford
A timely examination of catastrophes that humanity has faced through history. There are lessons, warnings and solace to be drawn from this deep time perspective on the existential challenges facing us today. — Alice Roberts, author of Ancestors: The Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials
With her knack for bringing the ancient world to life, Lizzie Wade turns the idea of apocalypse on its head, showing us how endings offer new opportunities for freedom, community building, and cultural change. APOCALYPSE is a fascinating chronicle of our deep past, written with extraordinary wisdom and clarity. — Annalee Newitz, author of The Terraformers
We all know the images that portray life at the end of civilization—the survivors scrabbling through ruined cities. Strangely, though, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, and geneticists have been studying the collapses of the past for decades, and—as Lizzie Wade’s crisp, superb APOCALYPSE makes clear—the drumbeat of Hollywood imagery bears little relation to what has happened, or what we could expect. The true story is more complex, more interesting, and—paradoxically—more hopeful. — Charles Mann, author of The Wizard and the Prophet and 1491
It’s been so heartening to see the book and its message resonate with early readers, especially as our own apocalypses intensify. It’s easy to feel alone in our uncertainty, worries, and struggles—both as individuals and as societies confronting global catastrophes of a kind so many of us never imagined we’d have to live through. But writing APOCALYPSE taught me that we’ve been here before, and that we’ve never been helpless. We’re the heirs of a long history of adaptation, creativity, and survival that reaches as far back as humanity itself. We can do this. We will do this. APOCALYPSE is here to help.