Felipe Fern ndez-Armesto's Millennium is a new initiative in narrative history, viewing the current millennium as it draws to a close as from the future- it sweeps the past and scans the prospects to present an unprecendented vision of genuinely global history. The evidence of what this thousand years represents is explored with more intricacy and intimacy than has ever been attempted in a work of this scale, with the help of perfectly chosen details culled from the bric a brac of the past to illuminate the slow but visible tide of history as it sweeps over the course of a millennium. With its vivid writing and hundreds of illustrations, Millennium is a classic of popular history- one of the few books which has relevance for the present as well as enduring interest for the future.