Questioning The Millennium

In this slender volume, Stephen Jay Gould addresses three questions about the millennium
with his typical combination of erudition, warmth and whimsy: As a calendrical event,
what is the concept of a millennium and how has its meaning shifted over time? How
did the projection of Christ's 1,000-year reign become a secular measure? And when
exactly will the millennium begin--January 1, 2000 or January 2, 2001? 'Our urge
to know is so great, but our common errors cut so deep. You just gotta love us,'
he states disarmingly in the preface. 'And you gotta view misguided millennial passion
as a primary example of our uniqueness and our absurdity--in other words, of our
humanity.' Gould's own curiosity about time and calendars was triggered by a 1950
issue of Life magazine, which cut the century in half with its evaluation
of what had happened and its prediction of things to come, propelling his third-grade
mind to the year 2000. In Questioning the Millennium, Gould promises to make
no predictions (other than 'an orgy of millennial books'); court no millennial epiphanies;
and put forth no theories on the collective angst that typically accompanies a century's
end. Instead, he answers the millennial questions which, for him, represent the
intersection of undeniable reality (natural fact) and human interpretation. Gould's
questions and learned answers, weaving many historical and scientific facts, are
a loving inquiry into the human need for order in a vast and teeming universe.