literary ambition = apocalypse

I'm going to take myself off to the book store later today, in search of books about 1816. This was a year where temperatures fell so drastically, owing to a major volcanic eruption on the other side of the world, that hundreds of thousands starved because of crop failure.
While surfing for appropriate books, I happened upon a Smithsonian article about suspected apocalyptic events. Seems that even the Assyrians were not immune.
An Assyrian clay tablet dating to around 2800 B.C. bears the inscription: “Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.”

