Customer Reviews

The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the Year 1000 A.D.

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Reston writes a highly entertaining, "popular" history, although I have some definite quibbles with his interpretations. It seems Reston wants to cash in on a "millenium" book, and has construed history to conform to this theme. At the turn of the millenium in which we are now living, most people on the planet are abundantly aware of this as an event. Not so in much of Europe around the year 1000. In particular, much of Northern Europe, still being pagan, did not follow the Julian Calendar. Even those who were aware of the 1000th anniversary since the birth of Christ, may have seen little significance in that number, as a full circle was seen as being divided into 1/12ths, and thus multiples of 12 were more "complete" and significant numbers than multiples of 10. The questions that are begged, therefore, are: How significant is a purely symbolic event if folk are not aware of it as anything special? Might an apocalyptic interpretation be cast over just about any time in history? Regardless, Reston's book is an entertaining read, and will give a vivid, imaginative sense of that period in Europe, as long as you don't count on it for historical accuracy.

I found this entertaining and informative book quite useful in researching my own book. What I liked most about it-outside of the fascinating stories-was that Reston pretty much lets his readers form their own conclusions about the causes of change during the last millennial transition.

So, I would take mild exception with the reviewer who indicated that Reston gives too much credit to the year-1000 rollover. That reviewer pointed out that "At the turn of the millenium in which we are now living, most people on the planet are abundantly aware of this as an event. Not so in much of Europe around the year 1000. In particular, much of Northern Europe, still being pagan, did not follow the Julian Calendar." While it's true that most of Europe was probably not aware that they were living 1,000 years after the birth of Christ, I don't recall Reston ever saying that the changes that occurred around the year 1000 had anything to do with millennial concern. He simply points out that many highly significant changes did, in fact, occur during this time frame. He leaves it up to the reader to deduce how much of this had anything to do with concern over the year 1000.

So, I think it's a well balanced and intriguing book.

This is an excellent book about a largely ignored chapter of European history. Filled with stories about the Vikings, Moors, Magyars, and the Papacy, Reston paints a facinating picture about the consolidation of christian power in Europe. Filled with facinating annecdotes, and quite a few horrifying atrocities this is one of the few historical texts I can give a universal reccomendation to. Especially reccomended to readers of Scandinavian or Hungarian descent; whose history by myth or generally ignored. The history of the Papacy has to be read to be believed; a good groundwork for understanding the crusades and the turbulent history of christianity is laid in those chapters. Ironically, the accesible nature of this book, and it's wonderful readability, may make it seem like a frivilous catalog of mutilation, but this is a well researched work and absoloutely worth reading.

Reston's "The Last Apocalypse" is a pleasure to read and very entertaining. He vividly describes the historical figures who lived (and often died) at the turn of the first millennium. Their names alone promise a good story: Olaf Trygvesson, Thorgeir the Lawspeaker, Queen Sigrid the Haughty, Svein Forkbeard, Ethelred the Unready, Gerbert the Wizard, and Otto the Dreamer, to name a few. As Reston tells it, these people were the protaganists in a grand struggle by which Europe was converted to Christianity.

Reston tries to be historically accurate, but he allows that "in portraying this dark and illiterate age, the oral tradition is the stuff of our history. In this work, I embrace it." And so the broad outlines of known events are colored in with poetry and saga. Still, that's not a bad approach--Reston is careful to distinguish between history and legend, and his use of oral tradition makes his subjects come alive despite one thousand years of distance.

If you like this book, I think you'll also enjoy "The Year 1000: What Life was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium," by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger, which is a short but fascinating description of English life in and around 1000 AD. Another promising book is David Howarth's "1066: The Year of the Conquest," which I recently purchased but have not yet read carefully.

In this volume Reston demonstrates his talent for readable popular history. There's nothing new in his story of close of the first millenium. Rather, it's an entertaining synthesis of what had long been known about those years. As reviewer Susan Zuckerman rightly suggests (see below), Reston forces his thesis a bit. The pagan Norse of Norway and Iceland, for example, would surely have seen Olaf Tryggvason as a fierce and successful warrior, but hardly as a bearer of the apocalypse, a Christian concept still foreign to them. Still, if you're looking for a page-turner about a fascinating moment of medieval history, give The Last Apoclaypse a try.

With the new millennium quickly approaching, it has become obvious that the populace of today's world has no fear, or any thought that there may be an apocalyptic event in the year 2000. I am not Nostrodamus, so I am not saying that there will be. I am just observing the fact that people today are looking at the year 2000 as a big party. Cruises are being booked; Hotels are sold out for the New Years Celebration; People are basically optimistic about the year 2000. The only catastrophic event we have to look forward to is the Y2K computer glitch and another presidential election. However, our ancestors of a 1,000 years ago faced the four riders of the apocalypse, death, famine, war and pestilence on a daily basis. In The Last Apocalypse, James Reston reminds us of a not so simple time when Viking hoards from Norway and Denmark, Muslim Moors and Hungarian Magyars had most of Europe under siege. Violence and cruelty were rampant and the invaders were spreading fear and destruction among the people of Europe. Leading many to believe that the proverbial end was at hand. And where was this new God of Christianity? 950 years have past since the death of Jesus and the pagans were running rampant in Europe. Where was the Church in this time of need?

Reston answers these questions and more in the 287 pages of the book in which he enchants the reader with an absorbing saga of the end of Europe at the last millennium. As the year 1000 approaches Christianity is seen in a battle for its existence against pagan and Muslim enemies, which were on the brink of conquering the Christian Kingdoms. The Vikings had a stranglehold on England, Ireland and France, the Magyars were laying waste to Germany and Italy and the Moors were chipping away at the last remnants of Charlemagne's empire in Spain. In the meantime, corruption and internal conflict are undermining the Church, rendering it useless against the rising tide of pagans and Muslims.

Yet by 1000 AD, the Church has pulled its act together and got its! house in order. It managed to convert the ruthless Vikings and the Hungarian Magyar Chiefs from their pagan ways to Christianity. It also checked the Muslim advance in Spain with the First Crusade, keeping them from reaching into the heart of Europe.

Reston convincingly argues that it was the conversion of pagan rulers to Christianity that truly made possible the transformation of the embattled kingdoms of 10th century Europe into the familiar history that we know today. He brings to life legendary leaders and warriors from King Ethelred the Unready of England, to the Moor Al-Mansor the Illustrious Victor to the abiding genius of the age, Pope Sylvester II, all bringing this strife-torn period to vibrant life with each page.

Reston begins the book visiting the site of the Battle of Muldon, wandering about Northy Island in Britain, referencing a tattered copy of The Battle of Muldon, an Old English epic poem of the last great battle between the Vikings and the people of Britain. Restons vast knowledge of 10th century history combined with his vivid interpretations of the periods events, makes for fascinating reading.

Reston shows that the period was in fact, a type of apocalypse. As a result of all that happens up to 1000 AD, the ancient world passed and new one replaced it. A dawn of a new age, where the Christian Church would battle for dominance in the world arena, Europe would become vastly more Christian and people would prosper as new trade develops with the rest if the world.

The Last Apocalypse is a book rich in historical detail, flavored with the stark detail of life in an apocalyptic age.

James Reston produces, in this book, one of the most fascinating reads of the Christian co-optation of Medieval Europe yet penned. The Catholic Church, political personalities (Pagan, Islamic, and Christian), and rumors of Apocalypse rush forward to meet at an uncertain intersection point behind Europe's "Veil of Tears." As a writer (here, at least,) of historical fiction, Reston is relieved of that most onerous of the Historian's burdens, presentation of absolute truth. Despite this, his references are superb, and point to an eye for quality of sources, while also revealing a knack for using legend as a springboard for research.

This jump into historically dicey water reveals the book's only problem, which is where, exactly, the border between fact and fiction lie within a "Holy See" of narrative. However, as is explained in the forward, the point of "The Last Apocalypse" is not to present a comprehensive history, but rather a unique intersection of fact and legend. The resulting "story" is quite the opposite of dry, and tends to produce (even in the dank and shackled minds of College Undergraduates, of which I am one,) a urning to learn more about the period. Reston's unique approach allows him to paint a vivid picture not possible with simple factual renderings. For this, I thank him. HST 205 would have been a true trial without such a book to light the way to the birth of a new era; the summer of '00.

This was the first of Reston's history books that I have read, and I was quite impressed. Reston is quite skilled at making history enjoyable to read, and he is, in general, quite well informed on the topics he writes about (in this book at least). As far as his brief histories of the vikings, Moors, and Magyars around the turn of the first millenium go, it is rather good. Sure, there are minor errors, and he is prone to simplifying things, but that is to be expected in any popularization. The purpose of a popular-level book is not to give intimate knowledge of the specifics of the period, but to give a general understanding of whatever the author is writing about. In this, Reston suceeds marvelously. If this were a book which set out to describe the victory of Christendom in uniting Europe around 1000 A.D., then this would be a smashing success. Unfortunately, that is not what Reston is setting out to do.

Reston's premise for this book is that everyone thought the world was going to end in the year 1000 A.D., and this belief was a signifacnt motivating factor in the conversion of the heathens still remaining in Europe. This is simply not true. Reston is quite shamelessly trying to cash in on the whole "the world's about to end" kick that hit us just before we entered the second millenium. One cannot imagine that this book would have been written at any time other than the late 90's. Reston takes a handful of quotes from people living around the end of the first millenium about how the end was coming, and uses this as his proof that everyone thought the world was ending. He seems to fail to realize (or, more probably, he purposely fails to acknowledge) that he could find quotes about how the world was going to end soon in just about any period of Christian history. There have always been Christians who were convinced that the end was near, and it would be just as absurd to claim that everyone thought the world was ending in 1988 because Edgar Wisenant wrote "88 reasons Why The Rapture Will Be in 1988" as it is for Reston to claim that everyone thought the world was ending in 1000 A.D. just because he was able to find a few scattered quotes (which, by the way, never connect the end of the world with the year 1000, but simply happen to be written around that time).

In short, the history is great when he's not trying to talk about the end of the world beliefs, and rather terrible when he is. Thankfully most of the book is good history, and the bad bits were just thrown in to generate sales. If you're interested in checking out the expansion of Christendom toward the end of the first millenium, it's worth checking out.

A little over a thousand years ago, In less than 50 years, Europe went from a chaotic, pagan, tribal backwater, to a collection of slowly progressing, (at least nominally) Christian nation states. How did that happen? Why did it happen? Read this book to get a first glimpse of the answers to these questions.

In "The Last Apocalypse" James Reston, Jr. has written a thorough yet readable history of the turn of the first millennium after Christ in Europe. Focusing mostly on twelve key characters Reston tells their story and the story of a crucial turning point in Western (and World) history. The writing reads like good journalism, even fiction in some spots. Reston is thorough, but doesn't get bogged down in extraneous details that make history dry. The stories come to life through witty and vivid use of language bordering on the literary. For both those who like to read history and those who don't this will be a great doorway into a little known corner of history.

I highly recommend this book for someone wishing to read an accessible history of the period. Unlike many books about this era, it is an easy, witty read full of well-chosen information. The personal vignettes are wonderful. I only have one criticism. Occasionally, I found the jumps between people and places difficult to follow.