The Book of Miracles

Long before the polar vortex froze the news cycle and radioactive squids started wrapping their tentacles around the Twittersphere, people have been obsessed with the depictions of the apocalypse. Now Taschen has reproduced The Book of Miracles, a rare 16th-century illuminated manuscript that depicts beautiful visions of the end of the world.

“The subject of natural disasters and their causes, a major theme of the manuscript, is just as pertinent today, in our age of climate catastrophe, as it was in mid-16th century Germany, even if our understanding is different,” Waterman, a German Renaissance art historian at Princeton, tells Co.Design.

Read more about the history of the book and see some of the incredible illustrations at Fast Company.