Praise for the first edition:
“[Dark] is a wide, wise, and good reader, and this book shows him also to be a fine writer—illuminating, engaging, often funny, sometimes disturbing. Familiarity with the cultural phenomena to which he points is helpful, but not necessary. Throughout he helpfully gestures toward others with apocalyptic eyeglasses: poets, theologians, critics, celebrities. If readers allow the book to do its work, they, too, will acquire what he calls ‘apocalyptic acumen’ or ‘imaginative magnanimity.’”
—Publishers Weekly