What if the apocalypse came with footnotes?
In his final semester before retirement, Professor Solomon Whitfield delivers eight weeks of lectures that will either enlighten or emotionally devastate his students, often both. The Last Third of The Last Second is fiction with a lethal dose of reality: every nuclear weapon count, every climate statistic, every pattern of human self-destruction is devastatingly, documentably real.
This is Sapiens rewritten by Vonnegut after a dark night of the soul. A species memoir disguised as a novel. Kurt Vonnegut's dark wit meets Yuval Noah Harari's unflinching analysis in a story that weaponizes truth through the intimacy of fiction.
From humanity's mysterious origins to our talent for building 315 times more nuclear weapons than needed to end civilization, from Cold War near-misses to climate denial to digital addiction, Whitfield guides six students through an intellectual demolition that's as darkly funny as it is terrifyingly accurate. The cosmic joke? We're the only species capable of recognizing our own absurdity—and consistently choosing to ignore it.
If you loved Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, or Joseph Heller's Catch-22, you will love this book.
Prepare to have your assumptions demolished and your awareness awakened.
This book won't let you look away. It will ruin your week, and you'll thank JC Ryan for it.
Praise for The Last Third of The Last Second
***** "A genre-defying masterpiece that weaponizes truth and compassion in equal measure." —T.M.
***** "Meticulously researched, ruthlessly honest fiction that refuses to comfort or escape." —K.L.
***** "Ryan delivers a literary gut-punch: every uncomfortable observation is terrifyingly real." —R.B.
***** "Bracing, brilliant, and bold—a lament and a call to clarity for our species." —J.S.
***** "Not just a novel, but a wake-up call; profoundly moving and intellectually relentless." —A.W.
In his final semester before retirement, Professor Solomon Whitfield delivers eight weeks of lectures that will either enlighten or emotionally devastate his students, often both. The Last Third of The Last Second is fiction with a lethal dose of reality: every nuclear weapon count, every climate statistic, every pattern of human self-destruction is devastatingly, documentably real.
This is Sapiens rewritten by Vonnegut after a dark night of the soul. A species memoir disguised as a novel. Kurt Vonnegut's dark wit meets Yuval Noah Harari's unflinching analysis in a story that weaponizes truth through the intimacy of fiction.
From humanity's mysterious origins to our talent for building 315 times more nuclear weapons than needed to end civilization, from Cold War near-misses to climate denial to digital addiction, Whitfield guides six students through an intellectual demolition that's as darkly funny as it is terrifyingly accurate. The cosmic joke? We're the only species capable of recognizing our own absurdity—and consistently choosing to ignore it.
If you loved Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, or Joseph Heller's Catch-22, you will love this book.
Prepare to have your assumptions demolished and your awareness awakened.
This book won't let you look away. It will ruin your week, and you'll thank JC Ryan for it.
Praise for The Last Third of The Last Second
***** "A genre-defying masterpiece that weaponizes truth and compassion in equal measure." —T.M.
***** "Meticulously researched, ruthlessly honest fiction that refuses to comfort or escape." —K.L.
***** "Ryan delivers a literary gut-punch: every uncomfortable observation is terrifyingly real." —R.B.
***** "Bracing, brilliant, and bold—a lament and a call to clarity for our species." —J.S.
***** "Not just a novel, but a wake-up call; profoundly moving and intellectually relentless." —A.W.
Used availability for JC Ryan's The Last Third of the Last Second