What do you think?
Rate this book
Century's End
This guide for the 1990s reveals fascinating patterns into cultural responses and looks at the twentieth century's approaching final decade
- GenresHistory
397 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
27 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 15, 2017
This book, published in 1990, anticipating the new millennium, gives a history of the the change of centuries since the year 1000, through 1900, and anticipating 2000. The author has an amazing grasp of the history, including the trivia of history. The book is written in a almost breathless, overly spirited way. And it mentions many things I had not heard of, and I found it useful to consult Wikipedia on a number of occasions to figure out what he is talking about.
That is good part. The bad part is that there is almost nothing to say about the ends of centuries in particular, at least before 1990. Apparently, apart from when they coincided with Jubilee years, people did not pay much attention to them or even know about them. Plus of course, until very recently, the "centuries" only applied to the Julian/Gregorian calendar, and thus only to part of the population of Europe. Furthermore, although there were plenty of apocalyptic episodes in history, they do not rarely coincide with century boundaries. Thus the whole premise of the book falls apart. When it finally reached the end of the 20th century, the book devolved into talking about various obscure religious or philosophical sects. It even completely missed (quite understandly, since it had not yet happened) the Y2K hype that surrounded the end beginning of 2000. At any rate, I struggled with and moderately enjoyed the first part of the book, I gave up reading the final third of the book when it reached the 20th century.
That is good part. The bad part is that there is almost nothing to say about the ends of centuries in particular, at least before 1990. Apparently, apart from when they coincided with Jubilee years, people did not pay much attention to them or even know about them. Plus of course, until very recently, the "centuries" only applied to the Julian/Gregorian calendar, and thus only to part of the population of Europe. Furthermore, although there were plenty of apocalyptic episodes in history, they do not rarely coincide with century boundaries. Thus the whole premise of the book falls apart. When it finally reached the end of the 20th century, the book devolved into talking about various obscure religious or philosophical sects. It even completely missed (quite understandly, since it had not yet happened) the Y2K hype that surrounded the end beginning of 2000. At any rate, I struggled with and moderately enjoyed the first part of the book, I gave up reading the final third of the book when it reached the 20th century.
Displaying 1 of 1 review