Rating: 
Summary: Very informative & entertaining account of the Year 1000 AD
Review: James Reston's account of Europe during the years leading up to and at 1000 AD makes very interesting reading and is quite enjoyable. The first few chapters covered the Vikings and sometimes you felt as if the author was pulling your leg with some of the names of the people & leaders involved, eg; 'Forkbeard', 'Blueteeth' 'Bloodaxe', 'Lapking' and many others. But as you read further into the story you realised that these people were real and that they were some of the players on the stage during this period of great turbelance along with 'Eirik the Red', 'Leif Eriksson' and 'Alfred the Great'. By the middle of the book I started to find some of the names of people and places I have read about before in Spain, Europe and the Byzantine Empire. Overall this was a very enjoyable account of some of the people and places that were involved in changing the face of Europe leading up to the first millennium.
Rating:
Summary: More myth and fable oriented than historical, but who cares
Review: Lets face it. It is difficult to get the true facts from over 1000 years ago. Most of us who are interested in history are not really interested in in facts but in well told stories. This book has plenty of the latter. I would not quote what ... [I] read in this book to others as FACT but I would probably share some of the viking stories to anyone willing to listen. Only four stars as the book drags towards the end.
Rating: 
Summary: Concise and extremely informative
Review: Reston captures the essence of the european history and the events of the Norse, Moors, Vikings, among others and includes highlights of war, aggression, passion and the pursuit of Christianity in this wonderful work. Without prior european history knowledge, this collection of personalities and events proves to give you a great foundation of information of Europe during the late 900s. An Excellent read!
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to discern historical fact from Reston's imagination
Review: Reston writes a highly entertaining, "popular" history, although I have some definite quibbles with his interpretations. It seems Reston wants to cash in on a "millenium" book, and has construed history to conform to this theme. At the turn of the millenium in which we are now living, most people on the planet are abundantly aware of this as an event. Not so in much of Europe around the year 1000. In particular, much of Northern Europe, still being pagan, did not follow the Julian Calendar. Even those who were aware of the 1000th anniversary since the birth of Christ, may have seen little significance in that number, as a full circle was seen as being divided into 1/12ths, and thus multiples of 12 were more "complete" and significant numbers than multiples of 10. The questions that are begged, therefore, are: How significant is a purely symbolic event if folk are not aware of it as anything special? Might an apocalyptic interpretation be cast over just about any time in history? Regardless, Reston's book is an entertaining read, and will give a vivid, imaginative sense of that period in Europe, as long as you don't count on it for historical accuracy.
Rating:
Summary: Embracing the Stuff of History
Review: Reston's "The Last Apocalypse" is a pleasure to read and very entertaining. He vividly describes the historical figures who lived (and often died) at the turn of the first millennium. Their names alone promise a good story: Olaf Trygvesson, Thorgeir the Lawspeaker, Queen Sigrid the Haughty, Svein Forkbeard, Ethelred the Unready, Gerbert the Wizard, and Otto the Dreamer, to name a few. As Reston tells it, these people were the protaganists in a grand struggle by which Europe was converted to Christianity.Reston tries to be historically accurate, but he allows that "in portraying this dark and illiterate age, the oral tradition is the stuff of our history. In this work, I embrace it." And so the broad outlines of known events are colored in with poetry and saga. Still, that's not a bad approach--Reston is careful to distinguish between history and legend, and his use of oral tradition makes his subjects come alive despite one thousand years of distance. If you like this book, I think you'll also enjoy "The Year 1000: What Life was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium," by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger, which is a short but fascinating description of English life in and around 1000 AD. Another promising book is David Howarth's "1066: The Year of the Conquest," which I recently purchased but have not yet read carefully.
Rating:
Summary: Embracing the Stuff of History
Review: Reston's "The Last Apocalypse" is a pleasure to read and very entertaining. He vividly describes the historical figures who lived (and often died) at the turn of the first millennium. Their names alone promise a good story: Olaf Trygvesson, Thorgeir the Lawspeaker, Queen Sigrid the Haughty, Svein Forkbeard, Ethelred the Unready, Gerbert the Wizard, and Otto the Dreamer, to name a few. As Reston tells it, these people were the protaganists in a grand struggle by which Europe was converted to Christianity. Reston tries to be historically accurate, but he allows that "in portraying this dark and illiterate age, the oral tradition is the stuff of our history. In this work, I embrace it." And so the broad outlines of known events are colored in with poetry and saga. Still, that's not a bad approach--Reston is careful to distinguish between history and legend, and his use of oral tradition makes his subjects come alive despite one thousand years of distance. If you like this book, I think you'll also enjoy "The Year 1000: What Life was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium," by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger, which is a short but fascinating description of English life in and around 1000 AD. Another promising book is David Howarth's "1066: The Year of the Conquest," which I recently purchased but have not yet read carefully.
Rating:
Summary: Embracing the Stuff of History
Review: Reston's "The Last Apocalypse" is a pleasure to read and very entertaining. He vividly describes the historical figures who lived (and often died) at the turn of the first millennium. Their names alone promise a good story: Olaf Trygvesson, Thorgeir the Lawspeaker, Queen Sigrid the Haughty, Svein Forkbeard, Ethelred the Unready, Gerbert the Wizard, and Otto the Dreamer, to name a few. As Reston tells it, these people were the protaganists in a grand struggle by which Europe was converted to Christianity. Reston tries to be historically accurate, but he allows that "in portraying this dark and illiterate age, the oral tradition is the stuff of our history. In this work, I embrace it." And so the broad outlines of known events are colored in with poetry and saga. Still, that's not a bad approach--Reston is careful to distinguish between history and legend, and his use of oral tradition makes his subjects come alive despite one thousand years of distance. If you like this book, I think you'll also enjoy "The Year 1000: What Life was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium," by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger, which is a short but fascinating description of English life in and around 1000 AD. Another promising book is David Howarth's "1066: The Year of the Conquest," which I recently purchased but have not yet read carefully.
Rating:
Summary: A time full of heros...just like today
Review: So what was it like to live in Europe in the year 1000 A.D.? The author gives a brief glimpse of it at the turn of the millennium, and the picture he gives is one of an existence that is partly brutal and partly poetic. Certainly the people who lived in that century had an abundance of courage and, judged by the many standards of the 21st century, their lifestyle may seem very primitive. But many of their beliefs and ideologies survive to this day, and, they are held by greater numbers. If one criticizes the people of this time as being barbaric, perhaps a lesson in statistics would be in order. Most of the people of this time, by an overwhelming majority, never killed anyone. A lesser number perhaps, but still a vast majority, never hurt anyone physically. Human brutality is rare, back then as it is now. Those who believe in an inherent murderous nature of humankind are poor statisticians. Very poor ones indeed. The author gives the reader details of the Viking raids, their kings, and their family life. Maps are drawn to delineate the pagan influences and control of Europe. It is perhaps not a surprise to see Christianity, Judaism, and Islam coexisting with, and mixing with, these earthly doctrines. Ideas, no matter how disjoint, can always eventually find an intersection. "To mix ones's faith was the fashion" says the author. This time had its share of genius, both scientific and literary. Most perhaps lived their lives as preparation for an afterlife, but their visions, some bold, some timid, and some violent, gave a continuity to history. Learning from example is a most powerful technique, and we can backpropagate to that time to make sure what was good about their culture is also good about ours. What is bad about it we can shelf and label: "For Reference Only". Did cold climate rear cold personalities? Can we blame the Viking conduct on the weather in Greenland? Not really, since, as the author states the world's climate in 1000 A.D. was more moderate than today. Greenland and Iceland were a full degree Centigrade hotter. Perhaps this made Leif Eriksson's trip to Greenland, in particular on an island just off its shores and close to the American continent, much easier. His voyage tells the reader that the New World is a lot older than is sometimes taught. The pagan blonde beat the Catholic merchant by almost five centuries. And those Viking women! A thousand year headstart on the women's movement of today, they hesitated not in their ambition. Could the men of today handle them? Queen Sigrid could drink the typical 21st century man under the table. Wife abuse was therefore uncommon, and was "a dangerous game", and "to strike her in the face could be suicide", says the author. And the empress Theophano is not to be forgotten, a counterexample against the preconception that beauty and brutality cannot exist in one person. The reader learns of Spain under the Moors, captured centuries before from remnants of the Visigoths. But under the Islamic Moors, "tolerance was deep", says the author. Christians were taxed via the "jizya", but were allowed to worship freely and "ring the bell on Sundays". Spain under the Moors had seventeen universities, but Christian Europe only two. No public libraries in Christian Europe, but seventy in Moorish Spain. Without a doubt, modern science owes a lot to Islam. The Moors were defeated four centuries later, and instead of obtaining more places of learning, Spain was blessed with The Inquisition. Europe was beginning to draw its boundaries, at least the ones familiar today. Al Mansor, Little Sancho, Sancho the Great, Otto the Great, Vajk the Saint, Gerbet the Wizard, and Theophano are discussed as the predominant figures doing this typically violent European redistricting. But should we really label history by the names of these individuals? Those outside of this small collection were the true movers of the time. Unknown perhaps, their contributions made life possible, then and now. They "walked silently through life" as the European philosopher Friederich Nietzsche would say of true heros over eight centuries later. The author ends the book with a recapitulation of the events, spanning over about forty years, that transformed the first millennium into the second. He calls it a "miraculous transformation" and says that as the new millennium began, there was a mood of "hope and excitement". If so, the similarity to the current time is uncanny. The world today is dramatically different, but the optimism remains, albeit amplified beyond measure. Regions of conflict still exist, some of these being identical to the ones of 1000 A.D. Some ideas have a long decay time. But in this millennium humans have learned to make copies of themselves, to create new lifeforms, make thinking machines out of grains of sand, and hurl themselves into space. If the humans of 1000 A.D. could see 21st century technology they would perhaps find it shocking, even alien. But they would find our optimism familiar. Very familiar.
Rating:
Summary: A time full of heros...just like today
Review: So what was it like to live in Europe in the year 1000 A.D.? The author gives a brief glimpse of it at the turn of the millennium, and the picture he gives is one of an existence that is partly brutal and partly poetic. Certainly the people who lived in that century had an abundance of courage and, judged by the many standards of the 21st century, their lifestyle may seem very primitive. But many of their beliefs and ideologies survive to this day, and, they are held by greater numbers. If one criticizes the people of this time as being barbaric, perhaps a lesson in statistics would be in order. Most of the people of this time, by an overwhelming majority, never killed anyone. A lesser number perhaps, but still a vast majority, never hurt anyone physically. Human brutality is rare, back then as it is now. Those who believe in an inherent murderous nature of humankind are poor statisticians. Very poor ones indeed. The author gives the reader details of the Viking raids, their kings, and their family life. Maps are drawn to delineate the pagan influences and control of Europe. It is perhaps not a surprise to see Christianity, Judaism, and Islam coexisting with, and mixing with, these earthly doctrines. Ideas, no matter how disjoint, can always eventually find an intersection. "To mix ones's faith was the fashion" says the author. This time had its share of genius, both scientific and literary. Most perhaps lived their lives as preparation for an afterlife, but their visions, some bold, some timid, and some violent, gave a continuity to history. Learning from example is a most powerful technique, and we can backpropagate to that time to make sure what was good about their culture is also good about ours. What is bad about it we can shelf and label: "For Reference Only". Did cold climate rear cold personalities? Can we blame the Viking conduct on the weather in Greenland? Not really, since, as the author states the world's climate in 1000 A.D. was more moderate than today. Greenland and Iceland were a full degree Centigrade hotter. Perhaps this made Leif Eriksson's trip to Greenland, in particular on an island just off its shores and close to the American continent, much easier. His voyage tells the reader that the New World is a lot older than is sometimes taught. The pagan blonde beat the Catholic merchant by almost five centuries. And those Viking women! A thousand year headstart on the women's movement of today, they hesitated not in their ambition. Could the men of today handle them? Queen Sigrid could drink the typical 21st century man under the table. Wife abuse was therefore uncommon, and was "a dangerous game", and "to strike her in the face could be suicide", says the author. And the empress Theophano is not to be forgotten, a counterexample against the preconception that beauty and brutality cannot exist in one person. The reader learns of Spain under the Moors, captured centuries before from remnants of the Visigoths. But under the Islamic Moors, "tolerance was deep", says the author. Christians were taxed via the "jizya", but were allowed to worship freely and "ring the bell on Sundays". Spain under the Moors had seventeen universities, but Christian Europe only two. No public libraries in Christian Europe, but seventy in Moorish Spain. Without a doubt, modern science owes a lot to Islam. The Moors were defeated four centuries later, and instead of obtaining more places of learning, Spain was blessed with The Inquisition. Europe was beginning to draw its boundaries, at least the ones familiar today. Al Mansor, Little Sancho, Sancho the Great, Otto the Great, Vajk the Saint, Gerbet the Wizard, and Theophano are discussed as the predominant figures doing this typically violent European redistricting. But should we really label history by the names of these individuals? Those outside of this small collection were the true movers of the time. Unknown perhaps, their contributions made life possible, then and now. They "walked silently through life" as the European philosopher Friederich Nietzsche would say of true heros over eight centuries later. The author ends the book with a recapitulation of the events, spanning over about forty years, that transformed the first millennium into the second. He calls it a "miraculous transformation" and says that as the new millennium began, there was a mood of "hope and excitement". If so, the similarity to the current time is uncanny. The world today is dramatically different, but the optimism remains, albeit amplified beyond measure. Regions of conflict still exist, some of these being identical to the ones of 1000 A.D. Some ideas have a long decay time. But in this millennium humans have learned to make copies of themselves, to create new lifeforms, make thinking machines out of grains of sand, and hurl themselves into space. If the humans of 1000 A.D. could see 21st century technology they would perhaps find it shocking, even alien. But they would find our optimism familiar. Very familiar.
Rating: 
Summary: Not even close to what I hoped for
Review: This book shouldn't be listed as 'history' -- it's a soap opera using myths, legends and a sprinkling of historical fact to describe the lifes, loves and back-room politics of the kings, queens, sultans and popes who happened to be ruling various European countries and tribes at the year 1,000. It needs some strong editing as well: we have events knowingly mentioned on one page but not explained for another chapter or two. Throw in the occasional error-in-fact (page 115, description of a battle in 732 AD: "With the defeat of the Moors, the advance of Islam into central Europe was checked forever." I guess the author's never heard of the Ottoman Turks) and this book was highly disappointing.
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