"The biblical Apocalypse of John offers a lens for considering the apocalyptic challenges of our time"--

Essays by Norman O. Brown, Danilo Dolci, Wolfgang Giegerich, James Hillman, Denise Levertov, Robert Jay Lifton, Joanna Macy, David Miller, Mike Perlam, and Mary Watkins. An extraordinary and prescient conference took place at Salva Regina College in Newport, Rhode Island, in June 1983. The theme was "Re-Imagining the End of the World." The audience brought together a radical mix of peace activists, clergy, poets, psychoanalysts, military historians, and officers from Newport‘s Naval War College. Facing Apocalypse presents the brilliant papers of those two days and the force of ten speakers‘ knowledge and conviction, including Norman O. Brown‘s radical reflections on Islam, David Miller‘s and Wolfgang Giegerich‘s unveiling of the the theological fantasies of the end of the world, and James Hillman‘s invocations of the God Mars.

That the Apocalypse of John is a “Revelation of Jesus Christ” (Rev 1:1) is a fact too often overlooked by interpreters of this last book of the Bible. As Msgr. A. Robert Nusca’s The Christ of the Apocalypse: Contemplating the Faces of Jesus in the Book of Revelation proposes, beyond predictions of earthquakes and falling stars, St. John articulates from start to finish a multifaceted and compelling portrait of Jesus Christ. Nusca offers an exegetical reading of selected verses of the Book of Revelation, incorporating rich spiritual and pastoral reflections. The Christ of the Apocalypse above all affirms that St. John’s God- and Christ-centered, symbolic universe offers our contemporary world a spiritual place to stand amid the shifting sands of postmodernity. As Cardinal Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, writes in his Foreword, “Now, as in the first century, Christians face martyrdom, and those who are not called to die for Christ are called to live for Christ in a world which in many ways rejects the Gospel. More than ever, we need the apocalyptic vision, to have our own vision of reality clarified, and to be strengthened in our evangelical witness.”

Praise for the first edition: "Aberth wears his very considerable and up-to-date scholarship lightly and his study of a series of complex and somber calamites is made remarkably vivid." -- Barrie Dobson, Honorary Professor of History, University of York The later Middle Ages was a period of unparalleled chaos and misery -in the form of war, famine, plague, and death. At times it must have seemed like the end of the world was truly at hand. And yet, as John Aberth reveals in this lively work, late medieval Europeans' cultural assumptions uniquely equipped them to face up postively to the huge problems that they faced. Relying on rich literary, historical and material sources, the book brings this period and its beliefs and attitudes vividly to life. Taking his themes from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, John Aberth describes how the lives of ordinary people were transformed by a series of crises, including the Great Famine, the Black Death and the Hundred Years War. Yet he also shows how prayers, chronicles, poetry, and especially commemorative art reveal an optimistic people, whose belief in the apocalypse somehow gave them the ability to transcend the woes they faced on this earth. This second edition is brought fully up to date with recent scholarship, and the scope of the book is broadened to include many more examples from mainland Europe. The new edition features fully revised sections on famine, war, and plague, as well as a new epitaph. The book draws some bold new conclusions and raises important questions, which will be fascinating reading for all students and general readers with an interest in medieval history.

Publishers Weekly Top 10 Best of the Year In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we'd do to survive the coming zombie plague. Praise for Maureen F. McHugh: "Gorgeously crafted stories."—Nancy Pearl, NPR "Hauntingly beautiful."—Booklist "Unpredictable and poetic work."—The Plain Dealer Maureen F. McHugh has lived in New York; Shijiazhuang, China; Ohio; Austin, Texas; and now lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of a Story Prize finalist collection, Mothers & Other Monsters, and four novels, including Tiptree Award-winner China Mountain Zhang and New York Times editor's choice Nekropolis. McHugh has also worked on alternate reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails, among others.

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • An absorbing, deeply felt book about our anxious present tense—and coming to grips with the future, by the author of the award-winning To Be a Machine. “Deeply funny and life-affirming, with a warm, generous outlook even on the most challenging of subjects.” —Esquire We’re alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny. A pandemic draws our global community to a halt. Everywhere you look there’s an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How is a person supposed to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What might it be like to live through the worst? And what on earth is anybody doing about it? Dublin-based writer Mark O’Connell is consumed by these questions—and, as the father of two young children, he finds them increasingly urgent. In Notes from an Apocalypse, he crosses the globe in pursuit of answers. He tours survival bunkers in South Dakota. He ventures to New Zealand, a favored retreat of billionaires banking on civilization’s collapse. He engages with would-be Mars colonists, preppers, right-wing conspiracists. And he bears witness to places, like Chernobyl, that the future has already visited—real-life portraits of the end of the world as we know it. What emerges is an absorbing, funny, and deeply felt book about our anxious present tense—and coming to grips with what’s ahead.

Apocalypse Secrets: Baha'i Interpretation of the Book of Revelation with 60 illustrations is a fresh provocative Parallel Interpretation of the Apocalypse or Book of Revelation. The author, John Able MD, is a retired intensive-care physician. He uses Baha'i Writings that interpret parts of the Apocalypse to decode it as a global tale of three millennia now passing through four centuries of the events of religious end-times. It is a tale of the struggles of seven Empires and seven Faiths, of their materialism and militarism, and the resulting mess into which the world is now crescendoing furiously and fast. These events center on the apocalyptic war waging between the Revelation beast of Muslim Militarism that drives the Middle East and the Revelation Babylon of Malignant Materialism that drives the Christian West. The fall of both is inevitable, with economic crises spiraling the globe into a paralytic depression, now triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. The good news is that spiritual economics will arise and our painful end times into wonderful beginning times. Apocalypse Secrets is a profound and astonishing work in biblical exegesis-a real tour de force as a strikingly original, scholarly, remarkably holistic, comprehensive, and rationally consistent interpretation of the Book of Revelation. Able intelligently probes and penetrates many of the great religious mysteries, and cogently argues that Revelation extends far beyond its strictly Middle East Christic origin. It transcends religious dogma, bridges religious faiths, and explains nineteen hundred years of troubling events in Christianity and Islam with amazing clarity and prescience. It is amazingly detailed and thorough. The author's stylish rhetoric is colorful and alive and his book beautifully crafted and researched, making for an engaging, enlightening, and thought-provoking read. In the end, a scholarly Translation Section decodes original Greek and Hebrew sources. Its strikingly lively translation sticks to the intention of the Greek original. It provides an authoritative base for his distinctive Parallel Interpretation. For anyone striving to penetrate the hidden secrets of the Apocalypse, Apocalypse Secrets is a must reading. This exceedingly interesting book will influence many future works about the subject and become a template of understanding and peace for all. After they read it, people who are interested in prophecy will never look at the Book of Revelation the same again. Visit www.apocalypse.info for more.

The Apocalypse (1st-2nd century, C.E.), also known as Revelations, is a great epic poetic work