Millennium

I enjoyed this book. It was readable and engaging. However, it wasn't a perfect book. Mortimer is quick to point out that this isn't a global history of the past millennium, and the author is at least up front and honest about that. Mortimer's expertise is medieval history and the European medieval history described in this book is fairly enlightening. However, what was disappointing was as the world moved from the insular medieval world view, Mortimer's history continued to remain very Eurocentric. Yes, there is mention of the trade with the east and the exploration of the west, but the history continued to remain focused on the changes in the European world. Despite this limitation, I had a good time reading this. It was well written, engaging, and actually a fun alternative perspective on world history. Rather than simply cataloging all historical events, this book takes a big picture perspective of the major events that resulted in change to the lives of the general public. Many historical accounts focus on historical figures, but the general premise of this book focused on how life changed overall as the centuries marched on. The writing had a very conversational tone and if there was mention to a topic I was unfamiliar with, I found myself quickly turning to Wikipedia to get more detail. I didn't see this as a limitation, but rather as a jumping off point to learn more about the past and its connection to the lives we live. Mortimer's conclusion chapter was the least engaging to me though. I enjoyed simply learning about each century from the big picture perspective, but the conclusion had to tie it all together to play with the general thought experiment to evaluate which century had the greatest change. Mortimer does a good job providing some measures of those change, but I felt that these ideas would have had more merit if he had introduced the measuring devices in the earlier chapters rather than creating them at the end. Overall, this is a great thought experiment and fun read.