Endgame (Derrick Jensen books)
Endgame: Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization
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| Author | Derrick Jensen |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Environment, Civilization |
| Publisher | Seven Stories Press |
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Publication date
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2006 |
| Media type | 2 Vols. Paperback. |
| Pages | 931 combined |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 64745326 |
| 304.2 22 | |
| LC Class | GF75 .J45 2006 |
Endgame is a two-volume work by Derrick Jensen, published in 2006, which argues that civilization is inherently unsustainable and addresses the resulting question of what to do about it. Volume 1, The Problem of Civilization, spells out the need to immediately and systematically destroy civilization. Volume 2, Resistance, is about the challenging physical task that dismantling civilization presents.
Jensen begins with a list of 20 premises, the most concise encapsulation of his ideas published to date (see them in their entirety below).
However, the bulk of the work is not written in such a highly structured, academic style. As in his previous books, A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe, Jensen uses the first-person, interweaving personal experiences with cited facts to construct his arguments. His books are written like narratives, lacking a linear, hierarchical structure. They are not divided into distinct sections devoted to an individual argument. Instead his writing is conversational, leaving one line of thought incomplete to move on to another and returning to it later on. Jensen uses this creative non-fiction style to combine his artistic voice with logical argument.
The books are addressed not to "fence-sitters," but to people who "already know how horrible civilization is, and who want to do something about it." The focus is on the urgency of action, not on convincing the audience of basic axioms like "natural processes are good." Nevertheless, Endgame includes many arguments for the validity of the book's premises.
The two volumes were not written as separate and distinct parts of a work, but were separated for practical reasons after the text was written. In Volume 1, Jensen argues for premises 1 through 17, and he argues for the remaining three premises and their variations in the first chapters of Volume 2.
Jensen was named "Person of the Year" by Press Action for publishing Endgame, which they called "the most important book of the decade." 2008: Named a “visionary” as one of Utne Reader magazine’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World.” 2008: Grand Prize winner, Eric Hoffer Book Award for Thought to Exist in the Wild, Derrick Jensen, Photographs by Karen Tweedy-Holmes. 2006: Named "Person of the Year" by Press Action for the publication of Endgame. 2003: The Culture of Make Believe was one of two finalists for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. 2000: Hackensack, NJ, Record declared A Language Older Than Words its best book of the year. 2000: Language was nominated for Quality Paperback Book Club's New Vision Award. 1998: Second Prize in the category of small budget non-profit advertisements, as determined by the Inland Northwest Ad Federation, for the first ad in the "National Forests: Your land, your choice" series. 1995: Critics' Choice for one of America's ten best nature books of 1995, for Listening to the Land: Conversations About Nature, Culture, and Eros.
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