The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium, An… (original 1999; edition 2000)

The title and subtitle pretty much tell you what you need to know about the book. Except they mean what was life like in the year 1000 in Britain. Still, it was pretty interesting. ( )

A fascinating and informative look at what life would have been like in England in the year 1000.

In this book, a journalist and a historian team up to take us back into the everyday life of the Anglo Saxons of "Engla-land" at the turn of the first millennium. Danny Danziger is the journalist, currently with the London Sunday Times. Robert Lacey is the historian - perhaps most well known to Americans as the author of Ford, The Man and The Machine. Together they have produced a highly readable 200 page journey back in time.

The book is organized as a journey through the year 1000. Using the monthly drawings from the Julius Work Calendar (dated roughly to the year 1020) as their starting point, each chapter highlights activities of daily life that occurred in a particular month (plowing, hunting, feasting, living thru each year's "hunger gap" when the food from last year's harvest was exhausted, and this year's harvest not yet in). It's a great way to approach the material and really lets you feel as if you are moving through the year 1000 yourself.

I give The Year 1000 4 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - I really liked it book and was glad I read it. I learned a quite a little from it and if you haven't already read it then I recommend you do (it came out in 1999 in time for the turning of the second millennium).

NOTE #1: The Julius Work Calendar is available for viewing online through the British Library if you are curious about the drawings this book uses as it's starting point. The drawings are on plates f.3r hrough f.8v at this link: https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_julius_a_vi_fs001r

NOTE #2: I'd also like to point out another book that has a very similar theme - Ian Mortimer's The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England. Where Lacey and Danziger focus on Anglo Saxon England in the year 1000, Mortimer picks up the story in the fourteenth century, well after the Norman conquest of 1066. His book is a bit longer and more detailed. I read it about five or six years back and found it just as engaging as this one. So if you think you'd like The Year 1000, you'll likely also want to explore Mortimer's book. ( )

This was a very interesting, informative book.

Each chapter did a split-focus, informing about a particular month and a particular aspect of society (generally associated with that month). For example, March and food, or July and food scarcity.

Lots of references, lots of small and large bits of info. If you are interested in this time period and in England, then I whole-heartedly recommend this book. ( )

2013 (my review can found on the LibraryThing page linked)
http://www.librarything.com/topic/160515#4393456 ( )

The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium by Robert Lacey Wow, this is so good.
 
Easily digestible in small chunks that never fail to amaze and illuminate. School put me off history for the rest of my life. It is books like this that make me realise how it could have been taught and how much I have missed. How much damage is done in schools!
 
Well presented and a joy to drink! ( )