Atlas of the Year 1000

By John Man

Book Overview

This dazzling book takes us on a voyage of discovery around the world at the turn of the last millennium, when for the first time the world was in essence a unity. Islam bridged Eurasia, western Europe, and North Africa. Vikings, with links to Scandinavia and Russia, had just arrived in North America. These and other peoples reached out to create links and put isolated cultures unwittingly in touch. John Man vividly captures these epochal events, and depicts the colorful peoples that defined the world's mix of stability and change, of isolation and contact. In an immensely learned portrayal, he traces enduring cultural strands that became part of the world as we know it today.

In text, maps, and pictures, most in color, and drawing on the expertise of two dozen consultants, John Man has created a concise compendium of all the major cultures of the lost millennial world of 1000. In some cultures--Europe, Islam, China, and Japan--written records contain a vast range of materials, often revealing sharply focused details of life and personality. Here lie startling contrasts with today's world, and even foreshadowing of the future that are equally astonishing in their familiarity. For nonliterate cultures--in the United States, Southeast Asia, Polynesia, Africa--this book draws on a wealth of archeological research, some of it made available to nonspecialists for the first time.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067400678X
• ISBN13: 9780674006782
• Release Date: December 2001
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 1.03 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.5" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

Deja Vu

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 ?

An impressive, informative historical survey.

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.

Brilliant performance

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!