Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0385255454, Hardcover)

The year 2000 approaches.  The chance we have now to look back and take stock will be unrepeatable for another thousand years.  Felipe Fernandes-Armesto's Millennium sweeps the past and scans the prospects to present an unprecedented vision of genuinely global history.

Millennium is a new initiative in narrative history, viewing the current millennium as it draws to a close as from the future.  The evidence of what this thousand years represents is explored with more intricacy and intimacy than has ever been attempted in a work of this size.  With the help of perfectly chosen details, our past history is illuminated over the course of a millennium on the scale of entire civilisations and cultures, revealing the historical initiative as it shifts from one part of the world to another and back again.

With its vivid writing and hundreds of illustrations, Millennium is a classic of popular history: one of the few books which has relevance for the present as well and enduring interest for the future.  Critically acclaimed on first publication, it was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize.


From the Trade Paperback edition.