Rating: 
Summary: Gould - good but bad, in a good/bad kind of way --
Review: -- But mostly good. I agree 100% with the person who wrote "I love Gould's essays. I hate Gould's self-indulgence. Gould always has something interesting to say, and this book is no exception. But he needs an editor who isn't overawed."Gould ironically has a tendency to be arrogant about his assertion that humans are too arrogantly "human-centered" in how they approach things. However, his message is still important. Here he examines the arbitrary nature of the "millennium" concept and shows people how silly they can be. We don't really understand everything -- that's his message. And I think part of the reason people feel uncomfortable with Gould is that *anybody* who tells you people are ultimately silly and arrogant *naturally* seems arrogant themselves. So it's not 100% his fault. Try the book and decide for yourself -- you'll definitely learn something along the way anyway!
Rating: 
Summary: A joy to read
Review: A joy to read. Gould makes a normally dry and tastless topic, humourous, and enjoyable. I loved the book, and everthing else by Gould I've ever read.
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Summary: The Millennnium: Just a Thousand Years
Review: As the year 2000 approached us, millennial worries proved quite the cash crop for pop culture. Although Gould goes into a lot of detail, providing more than most of us ever cared to know about the millennium, his book is a valuable and very necessary addition to an aspect of our culture that generally seems to promote fear in its beholders. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Gould encourages us to plunge onward, forward into the twenty-first century, eyes wide open.
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Summary: Fascinating Time and Time Again
Review: Gould is always an interesting author, whether you agree with him or not. (Not that I found anything to disagree with in this case.) If you love the idiosyncracies of human history, then you'll be intrigued by all the tidbits Gould pulls together regarding how our calendar was created (as well as how other calendars were created). His approach is light-hearted, which keeps the book from becoming a compendium of obtuse facts. If you're interested in the interplay between humans and millennial changes, also try James Reston's THE LAST APOCALYPSE and END-TIME PROPHECIES OF THE BIBLE (a shameless plug).
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Summary: The Millennium or Quetioning Stephen Jay Gould
Review: I found SJG's little book quite interesting in that he chases rabbits through fields of astronomy, calendrics, history, American Indian lore, mathematics, theology, and other areas including savants. He fails to include Julian days as a means or reckoning the passage of time in a very orderly fashion. Always entertaining but never conclusive on the subject, since he properly makes a distinction between The Millennium of Apocalypse and the millennium of the calendar, he leaves conclusions to the reader. He points out that the media did get it right, according to one school of thought, in the 1900-1901 century transition and the nineteenth century passed to the twentieth Dec. 31, 1900/Jan. 1, 1901. The mid point, however, was signaled by LIFE magazine publishing its mid century issue in January 1950 rather than 1951. What we are really concerned with is the consistent ordinary, everyday reckoning of time, days, and years in an orderly and rational manner. It doesn'take a PhD in calculus or differential equations to deduce that the twentieth century is 20th hundred years, that two millennia is two thousand years and until the 2,000 years have been completed at the END of year 2,000 the twenty- first century and the thirdmillennium have not arrived. As they say about opera...it isn't over till the fat lady sings. Buy a copy if you are a fan or borrow a copy if you like science fiction mixed with lots of unusual facts. You will find the finale a bit poignant, but don't cheat, resist the urge to peek.
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Summary: Readable but Not As Good As It Could Have Been
Review: I like Gould's writing and his thinking, on the occasions he thinks. But he, like too many science essayists, gives into an urge to emote and to put aside that vaunted rationalism. Instead, he irrationally sides with popular opinion on when the new millennium began and then tells a somewhat moving but totally irrelevant story about a mentally handicapped young man who can calculate what day of the week a day came out. He also indulges, less than usual, in his dislike of religion. As a stylist, Gould is among the best in the world of science. As a thinker, he's someone to reckon with. But as a total writer, he needs a bit of help. Still, this is a good history lesson.
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Summary: the millennium question unsolved
Review: In his lively book Stephen Jay Gould offers a lot of fascinating material as to how the millennium question has been treated with in modern times. But when it comes to the fundamental matter, that is to the establishment of the Chistian numbering of years in the 6th century, Gould commits the all too common mistake to believe he can solve a historical question by common sense. He should have taken his time to look into the sources at hand concerning Dionysius Exiguus and Beda Venerabilis. He would then have detected that the millennium question is of an even more intricate nature than he had imagined, and in particular has something to do with the calculation of the full moon.
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Summary: Cuts through the silliness with facts and reason
Review: It might be interesting to read, if the author weren't so arrogant and self-centred... and if, as a scientist should, he knew a bit more about mathematics. The question of when the millennium ends is not one of opinion, it is what it is. There is no year zero. Zero is an instant, namely the origin of the time axis. Let's graduate this axis in years. The interval between zero and 1, is called year 1. The interval between zero and -1, is called year -1. I repeat: there is no year zero. If the instant zero is the birth of Christ, year 1 is year 1 AD, year-1 is year 1 BC. And, of course, the second millennium after Christ ends on December 31, 2000. That's all there is to it.
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Summary: Questioning the Millennium
Review: Stephen Jay Gould is entertaining. His work Questioning the Millennium is that questioning, but entertaining. I like Gould as an author and his essays are thought provoking. This work is no different. Complex calendars and the idea of a millennium and how it effects us as a whole. A whole host of ideas brought to us from Gould's questioning mind. This is a rather short work of essays, but no less provoking. As with all of Gould's essays... either you like them or despise them, idiosyncrasies and all. Nonetheless this is entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: Questioning the Millennium
Review: Stephen Jay Gould is entertaining. His work Questioning the Millennium is that questioning, but entertaining. I like Gould as an author and his essays are thought provoking. This work is no different. Complex calendars and the idea of a millennium and how it effects us as a whole. A whole host of ideas brought to us from Gould's questioning mind. This is a rather short work of essays, but no less provoking. As with all of Gould's essays... either you like them or despise them, idiosyncrasies and all. Nonetheless this is entertaining.
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