When was the best time to panic about the varying crises facing humanity? Twenty years ago. But the next best time? Now?

In line with other considerations of what we have come to call the Anthropocene, in Panic Now? Tools for Humanizing, Ira J. Allen takes the reader on a journey through difficult feelings about the various crises facing humanity, and from there, to new ways of facing impending dread with a sense of empowerment. The interrelated threats of climate collapse, an artificial intelligence revolution, a sixth mass extinction, a novel chemical crisis, and more are all brought to us by what Allen describes as “CaCaCo,” the carbon-capitalism-colonialism assemblage.

After suggesting that it is absolutely time to panic, he asks: how do we manage to panic productively? Admitting there is no one script for everyone to follow, the author traces how we might adopt attitudes and practices that allow us to move through this liminal space between fear and action collectively. This book is a master class in how to create better, more humanizing outcomes by confronting the panic that goes along with the realization that the world as we know it is ending. Rather than remaining mentally, emotionally, imaginatively, and practically stuck in this historical condition, Allen invites us to a very particular, action-oriented mode of panic, which can indeed incite our imaginations to move from panic to empowerment.

The Panic of 1819 tells the story of the first nationwide economic collapse to strike the United States. Much more than a banking crisis or real estate bubble, the Panic was the culmination of an economic wave that rolled through the United States, forming before the War of 1812, cresting with the land and cotton boom of 1818, and crashing just as the nation confronted the crisis over slavery in Missouri.

The Panic introduced Americans to the new phenomenon of boom and bust, changed the country's attitudes towards wealth and poverty, spurred the political movement that became Jacksonian Democracy, and helped create the sectional divide that would lead to the Civil War. Although it stands as one of the turning points of American history, few Americans today have heard of the Panic of 1819, with the result that we continue to ignore its lessons—and repeat its mistakes.