26 Books Like The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes

I have always been interested in the world’s mysteries. This is why I studied theoretical physics. Ultimately, this scientific pathway led to a permanent position in the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. But archaeology is also fascinating, and I was lucky enough to decode some ancient symbols at one of the world’s most important archaeological sites, Göbekli Tepe. The resulting story combines archaeology, astronomy and geophysics to present a new synthesis for the origin of civilization. My academic background in science has helped me to provide compelling evidence and arguments for these ideas.

I have always been interested in the world’s mysteries. This is why I studied theoretical physics. Ultimately, this scientific pathway led to a permanent position in the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. But archaeology is also fascinating, and I was lucky enough to decode some ancient symbols at one of the world’s most important archaeological sites, Göbekli Tepe. The resulting story combines archaeology, astronomy and geophysics to present a new synthesis for the origin of civilization. My academic background in science has helped me to provide compelling evidence and arguments for these ideas.

I have always been interested in the world’s mysteries. This is why I studied theoretical physics. Ultimately, this scientific pathway led to a permanent position in the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. But archaeology is also fascinating, and I was lucky enough to decode some ancient symbols at one of the world’s most important archaeological sites, Göbekli Tepe. The resulting story combines archaeology, astronomy and geophysics to present a new synthesis for the origin of civilization. My academic background in science has helped me to provide compelling evidence and arguments for these ideas.

I have always been interested in the world’s mysteries. This is why I studied theoretical physics. Ultimately, this scientific pathway led to a permanent position in the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. But archaeology is also fascinating, and I was lucky enough to decode some ancient symbols at one of the world’s most important archaeological sites, Göbekli Tepe. The resulting story combines archaeology, astronomy and geophysics to present a new synthesis for the origin of civilization. My academic background in science has helped me to provide compelling evidence and arguments for these ideas.

Writing my eighth novel, The Testament of Jessie Lamb, I had to move the story into the future in order to explore the topics I was trying to understand. I think through writing: sometimes I feel it is only through writing that I really engage with the world. Work on Jessie Lamb entailed a lot of scientific and future research, and after that I read more and more future fiction, with an increasing appetite for the work of writers who are really interested in exploring where we are headed as a species, and how we might try to survive the damage we have inflicted on the earth.

For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to make a difference—by helping others become wiser and/or happier. But how? Colleagues, clients, and friends tell me that I have a capacity for energy that is boundless. I resisted that statement. It sounded “fluffy”. How could I make a difference if I saw “energy” as being some flighty firefly? Then, when I went through 2 bouts of burnout, I realized that energy was the secret—the secret to resilience, the secret to growth and service. Reading, writing, and speaking fill me with the energy to grow, learn, laugh, and serve. I trust these books and my writing will bring the same to you.

I pride myself on my independence and sense of adventure. I started traveling the world with my family when I was 3 and I haven’t stopped since. When you travel, you have to cope with new situations on a daily basis and navigate different obstacles to meet your needs. An interest in adventure and how people cope with new situations are the biggest reasons why I have a passion for books dealing with overcoming obstacles. Before I retired to Spain, I was a teacher of students between 10 and 15 years old. I chose two of the books I recommended to read to my students when I was a teacher. 

Resilience - helping people recover their capacities to deal with any adversity, stress, loss or trauma – is the heart of my work as a licensed psychotherapist (25 years) and an international trainer of mental health professionals (more than a decade). Bouncing Back is the book I wanted to be able to hand my clients to help them learn to use the capacities of resilience innate in their brains to develop more effective patterns of response to life crises and catastrophes. No such book was available at the time, so I wrote my own. It has become a tremendous resource for people to learn to how to be more resilient, and to learn that they can learn.

I have an idea. A conviction, let's call it, that humanity is not doomed. The Mad Max scenario where civilization collapses, thrusting us into an anarchic hellscape in which the living envy the dead, is totally unrealistic and not likely to happen. So let's imagine a post-apocalyptic scenario in which people come together to help each other, to save what knowledge they can, to build something new and useful. To learn the lessons from the destruction that came before. This is what I tried to imagine in my novel Bannerless, and this is why this topic interests me so much.

I am a historian of early America and I teach at George Mason University. What got me interested in disaster history was Superstorm Sandy, which ravaged the Jersey Shore (and New York City) in 2012. Sandy destroyed places I cared about—my childhood rollercoaster plunged into the ocean! As I watched the news obsessively, I saw a pattern that was familiar to me from Katrina and from other recent disasters. Quantitative information—how many lives and dollars lost—and insights from hurricane science came first, followed by human-interest stories, uplifting news of relief and resilience, and (eventually) post-disaster investigations and recriminations. I wanted to understand the roots of this pattern—this "culture of calamity." When did it originate? Where did it come from?