Millennium

Rating:
Summary: Controversial, intriguing - a masterpiece
Review: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto is a national treasure of the British isles. He is one historian-thinker who emerges as non-partisan and straight-forward. While I thoroughly enjoy the works of Paul Johnson and have praised Daniel Boorstin to the skies, there is something magisterial about the author's works. The level of scholarship combines with his always intriguing conclusions and suppositions. What I like best about this trio is their apparent affinity for describing long arches of history which is not an easy task.

Throughout the book the author asks us to project ourselves 10,000 years in the future and imagine what a galactic museum would display as a representation of the past millenium. He eschews such names as "Industrial Revolution" or "Protestant Reformation" or "Dark Ages" because these are not truly (to him) historical events but the name given to a series of happenings.

He makes the argument that influences from one civilization to another tend to ebb and flow and it is only in hindsight that one can see the writing on the wall. He has high praise for the Chinese Empire, it's culture and traditions. He demonstrates (as does Boorstin in THE DISCOVERERS) that the emergence of Western Europe as a dominating force was something totally unforseen, particularly considering the dominance of China and the Muslim world. Although it conquered the globe, to Fernandez this was only a temporary blot in the (apparent) onward march of the Pacific Rim. What is amazing (and controversial) is his assertion that despite the overwhelming pervasiveness of the United States in almost every measurable category, the pendelum has begun to swing back. He demonstrates his thesis not through battles and politics but through the everyday lives of the people since these reflect the true cultural inputs.

The writing is beautiful - even poetic - and the illustrations that accompany the text are an added bonus. This book is a labor of love. I am not at all certain I agree with all of the author's assumptions but then what kind of historian would he be if I did?

Rating:
Summary: Controversial, intriguing - a masterpiece
Review: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto is a national treasure of the British isles. He is one historian-thinker who emerges as non-partisan and straight-forward. While I thoroughly enjoy the works of Paul Johnson and have praised Daniel Boorstin to the skies, there is something magisterial about the author's works. The level of scholarship combines with his always intriguing conclusions and suppositions. What I like best about this trio is their apparent affinity for describing long arches of history which is not an easy task.

Throughout the book the author asks us to project ourselves 10,000 years in the future and imagine what a galactic museum would display as a representation of the past millenium. He eschews such names as "Industrial Revolution" or "Protestant Reformation" or "Dark Ages" because these are not truly (to him) historical events but the name given to a series of happenings.

He makes the argument that influences from one civilization to another tend to ebb and flow and it is only in hindsight that one can see the writing on the wall. He has high praise for the Chinese Empire, it's culture and traditions. He demonstrates (as does Boorstin in THE DISCOVERERS) that the emergence of Western Europe as a dominating force was something totally unforseen, particularly considering the dominance of China and the Muslim world. Although it conquered the globe, to Fernandez this was only a temporary blot in the (apparent) onward march of the Pacific Rim. What is amazing (and controversial) is his assertion that despite the overwhelming pervasiveness of the United States in almost every measurable category, the pendelum has begun to swing back. He demonstrates his thesis not through battles and politics but through the everyday lives of the people since these reflect the true cultural inputs.

The writing is beautiful - even poetic - and the illustrations that accompany the text are an added bonus. This book is a labor of love. I am not at all certain I agree with all of the author's assumptions but then what kind of historian would he be if I did?

Rating:
Summary: Y1K
Review: Fernandez-Armesto must be applauded by historians and other readers. This is simply one of the best written history books that I have ever read twice. The only problem with it is that I doubt that Fernandez-Armesto will live long enough to write a sequel.

Rating:
Summary: History for History Lovers
Review: I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a deep love of history. In clear witty prose the author disects the history of the last thousand years. Special attention is paid to the Islamic and Chinese cultures; not in a faux pc "multi-cultural" sense, but as important forces in world history and rivals of the West. A great deal of rubbish has been written in the guise of world history: this book demonstrates that an author doesn't have to be a fool to tackle such a task.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Know Much About History ...
Review: I read this book to fill in some of the many holes of my knowledge of history - especially Asian history. Well ... this book did not fill in anything. I look at this book as more of a collection of anecdotes then a history. The author obviously assumes that the reader is quite fluent in world history and often forgets to include the details that properly place the stories in with the more familiar history most of us history novices are familiar with. The author often uses phrases in Latin and other languages without an accompanying translation for us unworldly hicks. Many times I felt the author was looking down on the layperson that was audacious enough to attempt to comprehend his superior vocabulary and knowledge of history.

A disappointment all around for me.

Rating:
Summary: A magisterial review of the second millennium A.D.
Review: In embarking on histories whose geograhpical or time spans are wide, as is the case of this book, it is always useful to remind oneself of some of the conceptual traps into which one can easily fall. In this sweeping work of world history, historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto notes at the outset a self-fulfilling delusion which the habit of thinking in terms of centuries and decades establishes. He then offers twenty-three chapters ranging across Christendom, Islamic civlization, Aztec, Mayan and other civilizations outside the Old World, and the great cilizations of Asia and Africa, where he begins his book with Japan in the year 1005 and returns there at the turn of the millenium. His analysis is selective, iconoclastic and interpretative, and his style is engaging. There may be very few popular global histories written with such an ambitious ambit and which, while containing so much rich scholarly work, avoids focusing our sights on the trees of individual nations and epochs, thus preserving our vision of the overall global historical forest. While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I found the forward-looking futurology in the epilogue less satisfying and convincing that the preceding historical chapters, a failing which the author himself seems to anticipate.Whether cities will wither or whether so-called large states will continue to fragment, as the author speculates, are highly debatable propositions. None of this detracts from the rest of the book which is magisterial and one to which one can easily return several times.

Rating:
Summary: Great book...a little too politically correct,perhaps
Review: Insights in little-known and underrated civilization,and a much welcomed correction of Eurocentrism in History.But the Author carries it a little too far.Excuse us,Felipe,but Western Civilization gave humanity Science,Modern Medicine,Democracy,Human Rights (a concept of absolute value still unrecognised by Islam and China),Space Exploration,the Internet...what are Islam and China giving humanity NOW ? I'm not saying Western Civilisation is perfect (atomic bombs,pollution,the indecisiveness of ONU,the failure at Seattle) ,far from it,but a civilisation history must be wiewed not only in percentage mode,but also as a curve.And penicilline,sabin vaccine,the cure for many types of cancer were not found by the Chinese Ming,after all.

Rating:
Summary: Dazzling!
Review: The last few years have seen a flood of millennium-related books, ranging from the prophets of Y2K doom (or astronomical doom) to those of a new Eden. Admidst the more numerous books of a hysterical nature there have been a few more serious books that have attempted to put the events and changes of the last millenium in historical perspective, and to try and show how today's world evolved from its past.

I am an amateur reader of history, and the one conceptual difficulty I always have in reading history is seeing how events in different parts of the globe relate to one another in time. This is one area where "Millenium" excels. The author's command of history, and his abilty to smoothly move the narration through place and time creates, for the reader, a unified picture of the changes of a thousand years. No small trick.

As Fernandez-Armesto says in his preface, his aim is to "see the millennium from an imaginary distence...with unifying themes" and "to savor the differences from place to place and from time to time..." And so he does, with impressive skill. The resultant book is both scholarly and fascinating; on nearly every page you can find some previously unknown gem of art or history or technology.

You may not agree with the author's pronouncements for the future (as found in the epilogue) or his moral positions regarding present-day Western democracies, or even his economic analyses, but you cannot help but be impressed by his mastery of history, and you may find yourself swayed by the historical evidence he provides. A gem of a book, not to be missed.

Rating:
Summary: fascinating & eclectic overview of 1000 years world history
Review: This book was one of first books i read on history, and it got me hooked on the subject. I much appreciated the non-eurocentric approach, the broad swoop with many lively and telling details. Topics such as history of food, Chinese manufacturing techniques and ancient African empires i thought were all striking and original. As an economist, i found the discussion of economic development of 'modern' economies much less convincing. Overall, a very good, well-written, and rewarding study.

Rating:
Summary: A stimulating examination of 1,000 years
Review: This is a very good book to read. "Millennium: A History of the Last Thousand Years," is richly detailed and superbly written. Moreover, prize-winning author Felipe Fern?ndez-Armesto is both a "ferociously intelligent scholar" and an immensely successful "popular historian." To this end, this book is rare because you may never look at history the same after reading it.

Fern?ndez-Armesto looks at the millennium from an imaginary distance and creates spectacular unifying themes. In order to do so, he breaks the 1,000 years into five basic sections; Part One - The Springs of Initiative;Some Civilizations a Thousand Years Ago; Part Two - The Springs Uncoiled;The Reach of Conquest; Part Three - The Atlantic Crisis;The Redistribution of World Resources; Part Four - The Twist of Initiative;The Decline of Confidence and the Erosion of Empires; and Part Five - The Pacific Challenge;Oriental Resilience and Western Culture.

The narrative explores and creatively explains the historical importance of Christendom, Islam, China, Imperialism, Colonization, Industrialization, Commerce, Militant tendencies,
and Technology. The text also has dozens of wonderful pictures and drawings to enhance the narrative. The author covers a lot of ground but in doing so he has created an enduring book.

Bert Ruiz