Product Description

Enter the world of 1000 A.D., when Vikings, Moors, and barbarians battled kings and popes for the fate of Europe.

As the millennium approached, Europeans feared the world would end. The old order was crumbling, and terrifying and confusing new ideas were gaining hold in the populace. Random and horrific violence seemed to sprout everywhere without warning, and without apparent remedy. And, in fact, when the millennium arrived the apocalypse did take place; a world did end, and a new world arose from the ruins.

In 950, Ireland, England, and France were helpless against the ravages of the seagoing Vikings; the fierce and strange Hungarian Magyars laid waste to Germany and Italy; the legions of the Moors ruled Spain and threatened the remnants of Charlemagne's vast domain. The papacy was corrupt and decadent, overshadowed by glorious Byzantium. Yet a mere fifty years later, the gods of the Vikings were dethroned, the shamans of the Magyars were massacred, the magnificent Moorish caliphate disintegrated: The sign of the cross held sway from Spain in the West to Russia in the East.

James Reston, Jr.'s enthralling saga of how the Christian kingdoms converted, conquered, and slaughtered their way to dominance brings to life unforgettable historical characters who embodied the struggle for the soul of Europe. From the righteous fury of the Viking queen Sigrid the Strong-Minded, who burned unwanted suitors alive; to the brilliant but too-cunning Moor Al-Mansor the Illustrious Victor; to the aptly named English king Ethelred the Unready; to the abiding genius of the age, Pope Sylvester II--warrior-kings and concubine empresses, maniacal warriors and religious zealots, bring this stirring period to life.

The Last Apocalypse is a book rich in personal historical detail, flavored with the nearly magical sensibility of an apocalyptic age.

James Reston, Jr., is the author of ten previous books, including Galileo: A Life and Sherman's March and Vietnam. He has written for The New Yorker, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Time, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. His television work includes three "Frontline" documentaries, including "Eighty-Eight Seconds in Greensboro." The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars provided him with a Visiting Fellowship during the course of his work on this book. Reston lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3093577 in Books
• Published on: 1998-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Amazon.com Review
With the turn of the century approaching, talk of the apocalypse runs rampant. In The Last Apocalypse, James Reston reminds us that such talk is nothing new. At the previous turn of the millennium, Vikings, Moors, and Hungarian Magyars beseiged Europe with wanton cruelty and violence, spreading fear and destruction wherever they went and leading many to believe that the end of the world was near. Such colorful characters as Sigrid the Haughty, Svein Forkbeard, Ethelred the Unready, and Al-Mansor the Illustrious Victor were the heroes and villains of the era.

Reston, author of previous works that include Galileo: A Life and Sherman's March, evokes the historical essence of the time using limited legal and church documents, archaeological artifacts, and rare contemporary literary accounts. Reston's history reads like an engrossing novel, carefully crafted without getting bogged down in dry details. He skillfully interweaves the complex story of how each European country dealt with these changes, bringing the period back to life.

Reston portrays A.D. 999 as a profound turning point for mankind, mapping out the fate of each country as the Christian kingdoms, unified in belief, brutally conquered and imposed the will of Christianity upon heathen Europe. In the space of 60 years, the established ruling elite were slaughtered or forced to succumb to the turning religious tide. By A.D. 1050, the sign of the cross fell like an ominous shadow across Europe, paradoxically signifying the dawn of peace under Christian unity.

From Publishers Weekly
Reston theorizes that the year A.D. 999?the focus of this highly colorful narrative?was a turning point in history, marking the Christian West's joining of forces against the triple heathen threat of Vikings, Hungarian Magyar tribes and the Moors in Spain. His popular history actually shuttles back and forth from the early eighth century to the death of Hungary's Christianizing King Stephen in 1038. Biographer (Galileo), television writer and journalist, Reston draws liberally from period poems, folktales, sagas, myths, legends and holy chronicles to stitch together an entertaining tapestry replete with revenge, murder, treachery, carnal lusts, rape, geopolitical royal matchmaking and snatches from Norse lyrics. Most memorable are the odd, outsize characters such as Swedish pagan queen Sigrid the Strong-Minded, who burned her spurned suitors to death in a beer hall. Reston also evokes a Byzantine court rife with conspiracy, a corrupt papacy, the end-of-the-millennium broodings of Christians and heathens alike and the cosmopolitan culture of Moorish Spain.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Reston is a wonderful storyteller, and here he has an epic tale to tell. The time is the last few decades of the previous millennium. As the year A.D. 1000 approaches, Christianity is conquering the pagan world, though not always by the most religious of means, while barbarians, Vikings, and Moors are trying to maintain the old order. Reston jumps into this sweeping saga and discovers more thrilling action, more heroes and villains than could be found in an Old English epic. In fact, some of the people that Reston writes about also appeared in those poems. Reston begins the book with his dog-eared copy of The Battle of Maldon in hand as he wanders about Northy Island, where Byrhtnoth commanded the English soldiers against a fierce Viking attack in A.D. 991. Reston's seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of the tenth century, combined with his disarming interpretations of the period's events, makes for fascinating reading. His intermittent reflections on what the turn of the millennium meant to Europeans gives the book an additional level of interest. Fans of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror (1978) are the logical audience for this one. Ilene Cooper

Customer Reviews

Hard to discern historical fact from Reston's imagination
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.

Fascinating and Balanced
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.

Engaging, if stretched.
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.