The Year 1000

Michael Wolf reviewed The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey

Delightful, but not groundbreaking

4 stars

The Year 1000 is a fun look at Anglo-Saxon society in the year 1000. Despite the overwhelming amount of literature on these people, I was surprised to find a few fun factoids that I hadn't known. By focusing on the common folk, it provides a nice backdrop to study of the more traditional historical focus of the nobility of the time. The discussions of Y2K near the end make the book feel a bit dated, but not incredibly so. Worth reading for fans of well-written, lightish history

Bridgman reviewed The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey

Review of 'The Year 1000' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I thought I'd like this book but I didn't. I knew it would be centered around England and that's fine given that, as an American, a huge part of my cultural inheritance is from there. What I didn't know was that about ninety-five percent of its 201 pages would be about the influence of the church and a complex telling of historical events around the year 1000.
If you're a true Anglophile and already very versed in English history of this era, you may find The Year 1000 a pleasant refresher course. If you're not, you'll find it far too dense to follow, and disappointing in its lack of details that depict everyday life for a man or woman of that era. What was life like in cities? In towns? How did people prepare their food?
Some of this lack is not the authors' fault. As they note, the Normans …

I thought I'd like this book but I didn't. I knew it would be centered around England and that's fine given that, as an American, a huge part of my cultural inheritance is from there. What I didn't know was that about ninety-five percent of its 201 pages would be about the influence of the church and a complex telling of historical events around the year 1000.
If you're a true Anglophile and already very versed in English history of this era, you may find The Year 1000 a pleasant refresher course. If you're not, you'll find it far too dense to follow, and disappointing in its lack of details that depict everyday life for a man or woman of that era. What was life like in cities? In towns? How did people prepare their food?
Some of this lack is not the authors' fault. As they note, the Normans started to obliterate "evidence of the robust native culture that existed in England before their arrival in 1066" and the "chaos that followed Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteen century ... led to the worst destruction of all."

johnny dangerously. reviewed The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey

Review of 'The Year 1000' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Mediocre to good, but it's a quick and easy read. The central conceit-- which is not advertised anywhere in the book, presumably to make it more palatable to people buying it for the Y2K novelty when it was originally published-- is deeper than it seems.

The book takes you through a medieval calendar and talks about the cultural associations with that month, the traditions, the holidays, and the work of the average peasant. As books about the average person are punishingly rare, especially for this period, this book is valuable for a researcher. Recommended, but don't expect much analysis.

beeks

rated it

March 25, 2020

mad_frisbeterian

rated it

March 11, 2015

Kara Shallenberg

rated it

June 19, 2008

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