I could not get into this book, ultimately it was not form me and I could not finish it. It may be one for other readers

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

The short version is that this book was not what I expected it to be. I was looking for a historical look at previous civilizations that have fallen. I also expected a look at how our civilization could fall. Instead I got a political view of the world. My main issue is that absolutely no one should look to the government or politicians as a saving grace. I fall on the political side of: all politicians being the problem. To ask me to agree with you without you giving me any concrete evidence as to why is one of the main reasons we are in the current situation. I was looking for facts not political opinions.

Intriguing….

In the midst of a global pandemic, I guess it was natural for the title of this book to catch my eye. Survival is key to every element of life, and no more pronounced for humans than within a virus outbreak. Climate change, fuel shortages, there are world-wide problems and consequences looming if not already being dealt with. I was curious what the author, with his credentials as an archaeologist/anthropologist and a teacher of survivor skills (that’s an interesting combination, isn’t it?) would have to say…

And he said a lot, from a global perspective to an individual one. From ‘lost’ civilizations to how to cope with a current crisis on a personal level, the author walked through cause and effect as well as drilling down a problem to its very essence. I enjoyed his analysis as arguments were well-laid out and offered much food for thought. A crisis for one group of individuals may not necessarily mean a huge issue for another. Perspective was key and factored into much of the commentary and conclusions the author made.

Enjoyable on a societal, as well as personal one, the varied insight provided some new ideas as well as a few practical ones. While I wouldn’t view this as a doomsday prepper manual by any means, it does give a lot of food for thought…

I don't often read non-fiction, but this one caught my interest as it deals with the decline of civilisations, ways of life, cultures, etc. The title is a bit misleading to me, as it's not really about apocalypses, or anything, but more about anthropology. So, good job on the title author and editor! It totally makes people want to pick up the book!

Anyway, I liked reading about how societies that were huge in the past managed to evolve and tried to ensure survival for everyone, or most people. It's pretty cool to see how people reacted to change, and to understand there were never/rarely true apocalypses or big falls of civilizations. People merely adapted to another normal.

It was pretty informative in that sense. I only had a bit of an issue with the author, who narrates the whole book, as most of the narration revolved around him, what he did in his life etc. I mean, sometimes it was relevant, sometimes it felt like it wasn't so much. Still, I managed to follow his train of thought and read about the changes in various civilizations without getting bored or feeling the book was too long!

What will The Next Apocalypse look like? Will it follow the plots of a multitude of books, movies and television shows? An archaeologist looks at three “collapses” in modern times to determine how societies react to drastic events. Can the Mayan, Roman, and Eastern North American indigenous societies tell us how future collapses will occur?

Despite the author stating multiple times that people searching for underlying causes found problems within their own time, he does the same thing. Drought, deforestation and system disruption are frequently mentioned as issues both then and now. Of course, that doesn’t mean the author is incorrect.

Ultimately, The Next Apocalypse is interesting more than informative. Writers may find his suggestions on how to portray the apocalypse more accurately useful—though not necessarily more entertaining. After all, who doesn’t want to watch a single family struggle through a giant snowstorm. 4 stars!

Note: It helped me to be a professional student when reading this book. It uses the vocabulary of a college textbook though the prose is like a popular science book.

Thanks to Basic Books, Perseus Books, and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

This is an interesting look at apocalypse preparation from an author who combines an academic sensibility (he’s an archeologist and anthropologist) with real-life wilderness skills. The social commentary is extensive here, and he definitely has a point of view he’s selling. But it’s so far different than other “prepper” books I’ve read (mostly fiction) that I was intrigued, for the most part. The author’s confidence in human cooperation as the source of survival seems…naive? Or perhaps unsustainable. I’m not sure human history has ever seen anything near the social structure required to support that level of ongoing cooperation. But it’s an interesting thought, and this is a good addition to the literature imagining possible reactions to end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenarios.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Perseus Books for an advanced copy of this memoir and survival guide.

Survival has become big business. Especially in our new world of pandemics, coups and crazies wanting to tear everything down and start anew. Many think that Eden is just a global upheaval away. In his book The Next Apocalypse: The Art and Science of Survival, Chris Begley, an archeologist, diver and survival coach, approaches global devastation from a few different views. His book is a study of calamitys from the past, what might happen in the future, and tips and ideas that are helpful today.

Mr. Begley starts with the fall of Rome and the Mayan Empires. He points out that collapse just doesn't happen in one day, but is a long slide down, generations could pass before the passing of an empire would be noticed. People stayed as things started changing for the worse, others left for better places. That is when things break down, when people start leaving and leaving others to fend for themselves. Which brings us to modern survivalists.

Mr. Begley attempts to probe the mindset of the modern prepper, and those who seem almost giddy at the Future Mad Max world they want to inherit. The cowboy appeal of strong man defending the manse, that most studies of settlers in the west would show didn't really exist even back then. He uses his own time of living and working in Honduras where the ability to make fire and shelter even in the rain was very common. One person's weekend skills, is another person's daily life. I'm sure many will not find this section to their liking, but I found this very interesting.

Not your usual run of the mill survival book. There are some handy tips based on his experiences and research, but his main thought it that in survival and to survive you have to help other people, not flee and hide from reality. Important thoughts for our species as we seem to have forgotten.

This was great, a very honest look at prepper mentality and apocalyptic fascination written by an archeology professor who also teaches wilderness survival skills.

I enjoyed the author's disassembling of a selection of post-apocalyptic films and books too, although this part of the book was shorter and had fewer examples from popular culture than I'd expected. On the whole the book felt a little thinner than I would have liked - a few times Begley mentions examples to back up his arguments that I think would have benefitted from a fuller, more confident analysis, such as the environmental factors causing a chain of events resulting in the Syrian civil war.

I’m all about apocalyptic books, fiction of nonfiction. The world is ending anyway, according to the news. It’s just doing it slowly and stupidly. The books, at least, do it in an exciting fashion.
Well, maybe not all books. Certainly not this one. This is more of a sociopolitical and socioeconomic take on apocalypse, presented in a highly partisan left wing heavily didactic manner by a very well meaning altruist who seems to be very proud of being an archeologist.
Seriously, if I had a dollar for every sentence in this book that he started with the words As an archeologist…well, there’d be a lot of dollars. Mind you, the man is also an anthropologist, but this is only a sentence starter once and seems almost like a typo.
At any rate, the author is well educated in the and experienced in the fields of archeology and anthropology, so his views are both informed and well formed. And, of course, he is absolutely right to castigate the right for all they’ve done to grease the wheels of the coming apocalypse train, from climate change deniers to whatever the f*ck the last 5 years have been.
But, having that been said, as a book this didn’t do much for me. I didn’t care for the overbearing self righteously idealistic tone very much. And I really didn’t enjoy the repetitiveness with which the author belabored his ideas. Over and over and over again and it’s like, ok, already, that nail is hammered, continue.
I’m also not sure I entirely agree with his ideology, though he makes compelling arguments. For instance, in the first section of the book he argues that civilizations do not collapse, they merely evolve…or devolve would be more accurate and the remnants assimilate with the majority at the time. So Mayan civilization in his view did not collapse, it just diminished dramatically and the rest of the Mayan people went to live among the other locals.
I mean, for me, if a civilization no longer has their customary way of life (their cities, sacrifice slabs, etc.) and the population gets reduced by something like 90%...that’s a freaking collapse.
But ok. Next up, the author argues that apocalypse is different for different people. For someone in Central America (or presumably any other third world country) EMP or something like that wouldn’t be a tragedy, they might not have had electricity to begin with.
And this is a huge thing with him too, most of his ideology is based on going from Kentucky to Chicago to South America (kinda civilized to properly civilized to barely civilized) and all the concomitant culture clash and adjustments. Mind you, apparently, he loved it down there, went properly native, even married a local. (And boy, is this repeated in some form or another and frequently verbatim throughout the book.) Learned lot of survival skills too, more on this later.
But the thing is that’s also not ideal. And that’s also a form of collapse and something most people (not brave survivors of Central American privation, but many others) would dread. Frankly, Central Americans might not be huge fans of this lifestyle ether. After all, huge numbers of them risk their lives and limbs just to get out of there and come to one of those countries that EMP would, in fact, devastate.
And then, of course, as a well meaning liberal the author goes on to pontificate how cooperation in an apocalyptic situation would be the key to survival. And, should the civilization indeed collapse, how people should stay put and help one another. Which is a bewilderingly naïve and one sided perspective.
And this is from a man who actually appears to have some skills in surviving on his own, enough to teach a course about it. There’s some of that in the book, which makes up the only incontrovertibly practical portion of it.
Overall, this wasn’t at all the book I expected or was hoping for. It dragged at times accordingly.
This is the book on the apocalypse the PC police would write, if they took the time to write books instead of sitting around making up stupid rules. The political correctness of the text is overwhelming. Granted, some of it is interesting, like the malecentric paternalistic attitudes in apocalyptic fiction and movies. Like I said, the author makes some interesting arguments. But they are so overbaked and, frankly, use precisely the sources they need to support them.
Can the Walking Dead (arguably some of the greatest apocalyptic fiction and definitely the greatest apocalypse tv show ever) be presented to support such an argument because of Rick Grimes’ many years of leadership? Well, sure. But arguably, Michonne is just as good and some of the female antagonists on the show have outshone the guys, for sure. Alpha is infinitely creepier and scarier than the Governor.
But this is a digression and as much as I’d love to discuss WD, this review is already much too long.
So to sum up, I didn’t love this book. I’m not sure I liked it all that much either. It frustrated me with its repetitive writing style and its overdone political message. I didn’t necessarily love the author’s tone and his overfond experiences of being, essentially, a poverty tourist, albeit with a prolonged work based stay, in a small third world village got tiresome. Only a first world person would get such a kick out of sh*tting in the wild and forgoing modern conveniences in general. That’s why they invented camping.
Then again, he makes some interesting thought provoking arguments and the book was informative at times (such as survival gear) so it wasn’t a total waste of time either. I’m going to go back to Walking Dead, though, for apocalypse entertainment and mental prep.
Other readers might get more out of this one. Thanks Netgalley.

'The Next Apocalypse' is a solidly-argued discussion about how we misunderstand history's societal "collapses" and the apocalypses we envision in the future.

Begley is an archaeologist, and he throws in plenty of engaging vignettes about his experiences that illustrate his points. I found his explanations of episodes in history such as the "collapse" of the Mayan civilisation to be fascinating and new to me.

I enjoyed the author's disassembling of a selection of post-apocalyptic films and books too, although this part of the book was shorter and had fewer examples from popular culture than I'd expected. On the whole the book felt a little thinner than I would have liked - a few times Begley mentions examples to back up his arguments that I think would have benefitted from a fuller, more confident analysis, such as the environmental factors causing a chain of events resulting in the Syrian civil war.

Still, there is plenty in this book to chew and mull over. Begley rightly points out the fallacies in the thinking of many apocalypse "preppers" (who are often very conservative too), many of whom he encountered personally at gun shows. I once read a "prepper" book for story research, and the contrast between that book and this one couldn't have been clearer. "Preppers" can only think about fortresses and protecting one's immediate family, whereas history shows us that survival is dependent on community.

Well worth reading!

(With thanks to Basic Books and NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review)

What does apocalypse mean for the broad audience? And are we so mesmerized and frightened of the perspective of an apocalypse? In his book ‘The Next Apocalypse: The Art and Science of Survival,’ Chris Begley, an archeologist with 25 years of experience, dives right into the roots of the phenomenon. He asks what the next apocalypse will look like and why people are so obsessed with the topic in the first place. He bases answers on his experience as an archeologist in different parts of the world as well as on conversations with experts in history and collapses’ anatomy.

Often when imagining an apocalypse, people think of a sudden catastrophe that in minutes turns the world upside down. We know the basics from the TV shows, movies, and books:
Run as fast as you can.
Fight for the supplies (if you don’t own a gun, you are doomed).
Go to the countryside.
Avoid big cities as long as possible.
Hide from zombies (if there are no zombies, then hide from other people and organize in small groups).
Aliens, a meteor, nuclear war, climate change; fears of the future are nurtured exponentially by all sorts of media. Some of them are fictional, some are real, but the point is: many of us want to be ready. However, as the current pandemic showed, nobody can be prepared to work from home and homeschool children.

In his book, Chris Begley dissects the myths surrounding apocalypses one by one until global scale preparedness seems senseless. Instead, he proposes a brief practical course of survival skills that would be useful in the short term. The main difference from other classes is that the author focuses more on the decision-making paradigm – assessing the critical situation – rather than fearmongering and storing the supplies.

With a calculated approach to apocalypses, insightful observations of the existing apocalyptic mythology, and the understandable text sprinkled with kindness, the book will be an excellent, entertaining and informative, journey for a future reader.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This was great, a very honest look at prepper mentality and apocalyptic fascination written by an archeology professor who teaches wilderness survival skills. The book is divided into three parts not counting the wrap-up. Part one is an historical look at what constitutes the end of the world (hint: we're still here). The second part looks at some of the things frequently overlooked by preppers (even if seven billion people on the planet get taken out there's still one billion remaining so the lone family savior thing might not be realistic, Begley believes there will still be a need for a community approach). The third part is some of that basic survivor skill stuff you're looking for (how to build a fire, what else you're going to need) and a little bit more of the rational philosopher stuff that we see throughout the book. As stated, the author is a professor and at times this reads like a really good lecture: very informative and easy to digest.

Thank you NetGalley, Publisher and Author for this ebook copy!

I didn't realize this was non-fiction.
I usually don't read non-fiction so since I requested I thought what the hey.
And The Next Apocalypse by Chris was actually quiet interesting.
Honestly I was surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did.

This book talks about survivalism, and social criticism which I found to be amazing.
The book is all the more astonishing. I enjoyed the writing and most importantly the information that Begley included in The Next Apocalypse.

Thank you again for the opportunity to read this ebook!