Customer Reviews

Atlas of the Year 1000

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No book I've seen so perfectly portrays what a thousand years of human history means. It's an intriguing idea to scan, but then the sheer quality of the material John Man has found forces you to examine the work in detail after amazing detail---Chinese junks with 6 masts that could carry 500 people!

John Man's Atlas Of The Year 1000 provides a fine choice for the Year 2000 reader: a survey of the inventions which took place around the world at the turn of the last century. Chapters pair sidebars of information and color maps with illustrations and lively descriptions of explorations and events which affected and changed the world of the times.

Really shows what a difference 1,000 years can make. The most remarkable fact this atlas brings out is the border of Eastern Germany and the Slavs is almost exactly as today's border with Poland. Can this be a coincidence or were the allied powers after WWII knowingly trying to repeat history by forcibly removing 13 million Germans from lands east of the Oder and Niesse rivers ?

This is a very enjoyable book - I bought it as background for a trip to Norway, and found the text and graphics fascinating and very well produced. I was, however, disappointed to find a missing sentence on the subject I was most interested in (the Vikings). When I spoke to the editorial department at Harvard University Press, they told me that if I wanted to find out how the section ended I would have to write to England, because they didn't know what was in the book they published! Fortunately, the customer service department rescued me from the trolls in "editorial," but I wasn't very impressed - what do they think they're selling - soap?