Earth's Holocaust

Nathaniel Hawthorne's allegorical satire unfolds around a colossal bonfire where humanity gathers to purge the world of its "worn-out trumpery." Newspapers, aristocratic emblems, crowns, sceptres, liquor, tobacco, war relics, execution devices, marriage records, money, legal codes, books, church furnishings, and even Bibles are fed into the flames in the name of reform. Each destruction promises liberation: from class privilege, vice, war, cruelty, inherited thought, and religious formality. Yet Hawthorne keeps the spectacle uneasy and comic, as noblemen, temperance crusaders, pacifists, reformers, skeptics, and the condemned all argue over what society can afford to lose. At the center of the blaze, a dark mocker and the narrator's own reflections expose the story's deepest warning: evil cannot be burned away from objects alone, because its true source lies in the human heart. Even as the fire seems to purify literature and scripture, Hawthorne suggests that truth endures while falsehood and ornament perish. The result is a sharp, unsettling parable about the limits of reform and the danger of mistaking outward cleansing for moral renewal. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.