Short book titles that start with “The End of …” began to appear long ago. George Waring’s The End of Time, published in 1790, set a good, clean standard for title pithiness. In 1795, Thomas Spence followed suit with The End of Oppression. The trend was set. Here are some, but by no means all, of the other non-fiction Ends to which authors and publishers have gone. (Some added a colon and subtitles to their basic four or five words, but only purists need hold that against them.) Together they almost tell a story:
The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben; The End of Science, by John Horgan; The End of Medicine, by Andy Kessler; The End of Medicine, by Rick Carlson; The End of Medicine, by Kaare Bursell; The End of History, by Francis Fukuyama; The End of History, by Philip N Moore; The End of Food, by Thomas F Pawlick; The End of Oil, by Paul Roberts…
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.