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1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ranking the Men and Women Who Shaped the Millennium
From George Washington to Babe Ruth, Adolf Hitler to Mother Teresa, this fascinating study profiles--and rates--the one thousand individuals, including philosophers, artists, statesmen, inventors, and explorers, who have shaped the history of the last one thousand years. Simultaneous.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
January 24, 2016
What a great book to learn new people and history. I read 10 new people a day and enjoyed the quick bits of history I learned. Fantastic read, Very recommended
September 30, 2015
In the first part(1-100) of 1,000 years 1,000 people, it is mainly about the unsung and underappreciated. This part has the most recognizable people from Johannes Gutenberg to Henry the VIII of England. There are mostly scientists, and artists that are extremely famous for their pieces of art and their discoveries which have inspired many back then and still to this day. These people are the beginning behind everything. The others that come after build on top of what they've done, improving the ideas and thoughts for the better. The people that interested me the most were: Pablo Picasso, because he was an art colossus who was said to have worked twenty thousand works that included everything you could imagine, which shows his amazing and endless creativity to then be put into wonderful works of art. I also liked Joseph Marie Jacquard, and her four thousand year ago invention of the loom. Weaving back then was a very slow and painful process because everything was handmade. Joseph wanted to create a machine in order to make weaving much safer and faster. In conclusion, these two people put a lot of thought and effort into doing what they do which is why they inspired me the most in part one(1-100).
October 14, 2020
This is an excellent starting point for more in-depth biographical and historical reading. Short vignettes of various important people through the last 1000 years of history. I appreciate and agree with #1--the rest are up for debate.
September 25, 2016
This is an interesting book. This book is about people in the millennium, ranked from 1 to 1000. This book is a two-column book. It gave a small summary of each person. In the book their are some people you might know are in this book, such as William Shakespeare ranked #5, Susan B. Anthony ranked #139 or even Elvis Presley ranked #352. But throughout the book their were plenty of people that you most likely haven't heard of like Godfery Newbold Hounsfield the person who came up with a CAT scan, or Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet the 1st schoolmaster to the deaf. This book was a book I liked because of the new people I learned about.
I enjoyed the book because of all the new things I learned. Such as Samuel Mores was the first person to create the telegraph. Also that Francis Fry was the person who made chocolate bars now that man new what he was doing. I opened a whole new world for me. But...
I belive this book was ment for people who like to agree to disagree. For example you would think that something should be ranked higher but is not like Giuseppe Fiorelli the first person to discover dust. Yes that did help with keeping ourselves clean but it isn't something that should be ranked in the 600's, compared to a woman who created jazz that was ranked in the 900's. Which I obviously disagree with. Also the book started to get boring once you get to the 600's and 700's.
Overall the book was great and I enjoyed it. The problem was that the book did start going downhill after page 200. But don't that stop from reading this book
I enjoyed the book because of all the new things I learned. Such as Samuel Mores was the first person to create the telegraph. Also that Francis Fry was the person who made chocolate bars now that man new what he was doing. I opened a whole new world for me. But...
I belive this book was ment for people who like to agree to disagree. For example you would think that something should be ranked higher but is not like Giuseppe Fiorelli the first person to discover dust. Yes that did help with keeping ourselves clean but it isn't something that should be ranked in the 600's, compared to a woman who created jazz that was ranked in the 900's. Which I obviously disagree with. Also the book started to get boring once you get to the 600's and 700's.
Overall the book was great and I enjoyed it. The problem was that the book did start going downhill after page 200. But don't that stop from reading this book
March 10, 2020
I don't know how long this book has been on my bookshelf. A long time. And I can't remember why I bought it. I think it must have been around that time when I wanted to be a historian. The book is fascinating but there is so many people discussed here that it was a hard book to read cover to cover. Truth be told towards the end, I had to decide to skim over many of the people's brief autobiography. I enjoyed reading about many of the listed people but in reality I don't really care to know about this famous ballerina or that foreign businessman. As a reference book to look back through later when you want a brief factual paragraph on some name you came across it's probably a good source. Going through the book cover to cover does give the reader a good overview of major names worldwide. I enjoy that each person only has a brief autobiography. It wont bore you to death. And there is some humor that the authors include for that very reason. But it is a lot of information. Recommended if you are interested in history or people.
December 18, 2025
Review title: Millennium name check
This is a moderately useful reference book for the history of the past 1000 years, with a few flaws. First is that when you do any kind of countdown to the best, most, worst, or least of anything, it is more dramatic and interesting to start at the bottom and work your way up; the authors here started at the top with the most important name in the millennium and went down to Mr. 1000. This is most easily remedied by starting at the back of this book and reading your way up the list, which is what I did when I realized the order. Apart from some awkward page flipping when an entry spanned pages it masked that flaw.
The second and not so easily addressed flaw is the "BioGraph" system used for ranking the names of the millennium. I had no problem with the criteria or the weighting (p. ix):
1. Lasting influence. (10,000 points)
2. Impact (both positive and negative) on the world. (5,000 points)
3. Influence on contemporaries (4,000 points)
4. Uniqueness of contribution (3,000 points)
5. Charisma (fame or celebrity status) (2,000 points)
I could quibble about the magnitude of the points scale (I might have reduce each point scale by a factor of 10) but I think the authors identified and weighted them accurately. The problem is that after establishing a valid system and giving it a capital-lettered name, they didn't let us see how they used it. Each entry only includes the total BioGraph score, not the score for each component. So number 1 on the list (I'm not spoiling it for you by giving any names) does have the highest score, but we don't know how they scored in each of the individual criterion, and there is no way to compare any two names on the list based on their score on any specific criterion. Indexes listing the names by their ranking on each criterion would have been very interesting.
The third flaw is one of timing. The book was published in 1998 on the cusp of the explosion of information on the internet--and two years before the end of the millennium it documented as a period of time. I doubt the names in the list would have changed in that last 2/1000th of the millennium, but if the authors had waited 10 more years to publish they would have had a better assessment of the lasting influence and the impact of some of the younger names on the list, and they would have had an internet platform and audience to share some of those indexes I suggested. As it is, the authors did conclude with three tantalizing cuts (nationality, century, and field of work, p. 303-305) that might have taken too much space in print but would have been great as searchable internet pages. At the very least, they could have given that information along with the score for each criterion in each entry at the cost of a relatively small increase in the number of pages.
Enough quibbling. As I said to start this review, this is useful as a reference book of important names for the millennium that began in 1000 with a world divided by oceans and Crusades and ended with a world united by Y2k but still divided by oceans and crusades. As I read up from number 1000 to number 1 I found myself often flipping forward to the table of contents which lists the names in sequence and backward to the index which lists the names and important places, inventions, and events of the period in alphabetical order to see if and where they would come into the debate. And the authors right up front acknowledge that this book is a debate starter, not a final answer to the most important names of the millennium. Each entry consists of a paragraph of a few hundred words summarizing the life and importance of the person named. Some are the politicians, generals, and statesmen that we learned about in history classes, but even more are inventors, authors, artists, scientists, business leaders, philosophers, and religious leaders. Some are still living, but because their lasting impact is yet to be assessed they are few and clustered near the bottom. Many were heros, a few (ranking high because of their negative impact) were villains, most were flawed individuals. But all shaped their time and the years and centuries that followed.
Billions of humans lived on earth during these 1000 years, so narrowing a list down to just 1000 people who shaped those years seems impossible. But along with all the names I would have expected there are so many names here that I didn't know or remember from past reading and learning that I suspect that these are truly the men and women who have most shaped the world we live in now based on the past 1000 years. So I'm certain that this will be the source for additions to my reading wish list. The authors have achieved their goal.
This is a moderately useful reference book for the history of the past 1000 years, with a few flaws. First is that when you do any kind of countdown to the best, most, worst, or least of anything, it is more dramatic and interesting to start at the bottom and work your way up; the authors here started at the top with the most important name in the millennium and went down to Mr. 1000. This is most easily remedied by starting at the back of this book and reading your way up the list, which is what I did when I realized the order. Apart from some awkward page flipping when an entry spanned pages it masked that flaw.
The second and not so easily addressed flaw is the "BioGraph" system used for ranking the names of the millennium. I had no problem with the criteria or the weighting (p. ix):
1. Lasting influence. (10,000 points)
2. Impact (both positive and negative) on the world. (5,000 points)
3. Influence on contemporaries (4,000 points)
4. Uniqueness of contribution (3,000 points)
5. Charisma (fame or celebrity status) (2,000 points)
I could quibble about the magnitude of the points scale (I might have reduce each point scale by a factor of 10) but I think the authors identified and weighted them accurately. The problem is that after establishing a valid system and giving it a capital-lettered name, they didn't let us see how they used it. Each entry only includes the total BioGraph score, not the score for each component. So number 1 on the list (I'm not spoiling it for you by giving any names) does have the highest score, but we don't know how they scored in each of the individual criterion, and there is no way to compare any two names on the list based on their score on any specific criterion. Indexes listing the names by their ranking on each criterion would have been very interesting.
The third flaw is one of timing. The book was published in 1998 on the cusp of the explosion of information on the internet--and two years before the end of the millennium it documented as a period of time. I doubt the names in the list would have changed in that last 2/1000th of the millennium, but if the authors had waited 10 more years to publish they would have had a better assessment of the lasting influence and the impact of some of the younger names on the list, and they would have had an internet platform and audience to share some of those indexes I suggested. As it is, the authors did conclude with three tantalizing cuts (nationality, century, and field of work, p. 303-305) that might have taken too much space in print but would have been great as searchable internet pages. At the very least, they could have given that information along with the score for each criterion in each entry at the cost of a relatively small increase in the number of pages.
Enough quibbling. As I said to start this review, this is useful as a reference book of important names for the millennium that began in 1000 with a world divided by oceans and Crusades and ended with a world united by Y2k but still divided by oceans and crusades. As I read up from number 1000 to number 1 I found myself often flipping forward to the table of contents which lists the names in sequence and backward to the index which lists the names and important places, inventions, and events of the period in alphabetical order to see if and where they would come into the debate. And the authors right up front acknowledge that this book is a debate starter, not a final answer to the most important names of the millennium. Each entry consists of a paragraph of a few hundred words summarizing the life and importance of the person named. Some are the politicians, generals, and statesmen that we learned about in history classes, but even more are inventors, authors, artists, scientists, business leaders, philosophers, and religious leaders. Some are still living, but because their lasting impact is yet to be assessed they are few and clustered near the bottom. Many were heros, a few (ranking high because of their negative impact) were villains, most were flawed individuals. But all shaped their time and the years and centuries that followed.
Billions of humans lived on earth during these 1000 years, so narrowing a list down to just 1000 people who shaped those years seems impossible. But along with all the names I would have expected there are so many names here that I didn't know or remember from past reading and learning that I suspect that these are truly the men and women who have most shaped the world we live in now based on the past 1000 years. So I'm certain that this will be the source for additions to my reading wish list. The authors have achieved their goal.
April 19, 2023
This book took me quite a while to complete. There are 1000 people listed in the book. For each person, the authors provide a short bio on each. Therein lies the problem that I had with this book, that brief paragraph, just always left me wanting more. Some of these individuals I already knew quite a lot about, George Washington, e.g. Others I read the paragraph on them, and I will more than likely never hear of them again in my life. One interesting factor in the book was just seeing how the authors ranked the individuals and who came out ranked very high on the list. My lips are sealed, so if you want to know who is ranked number 1; you'll just have to obtain the book.
May 12, 2025
Leeuwenhock was tge court appointed receiver who forced Vermeer’s wife to sell 25 of his paintings for a pittance - and many such gems. My kind of book!!
July 31, 2011
This is a fascinating book. While it might be tempting to argue with the exact order of the authors' rankings, reading about the 1,000 people they selected is the interesting part. While some are extremely well known, others are far more obscure but no less influential. The people featured in this book have affected every aspect of our lives today, whether it is through the invention of the printing press, the microprocessor or the cathode ray tube or through the development of seminal psychological, philosophical or political theories. This book will provide hours of interesting and informative reading and can be read one entry at a time if you have but one minute to spare.
November 21, 2013
A unique compilation of the most famous and infamous men and women who left their mark on the world stage during the past mellinnium.
I particularly found it interesting that the authors included those known for their evil deeds as well as those whose deeds benefited mankind.
I was very surprised to discover how many individuals included in this work I had never heard, but probably should have.
I particularly found it interesting that the authors included those known for their evil deeds as well as those whose deeds benefited mankind.
I was very surprised to discover how many individuals included in this work I had never heard, but probably should have.
unfinished
March 9, 2009I think I got to number 563 out of 1000 people listed in the book, and I just couldn't do it...it stopped being interesting when I stopped recognizing the historical figure.
Needless to say...I just couldn't finish it...
Needless to say...I just couldn't finish it...
December 30, 2013
Excellent book that is not meant to be a speed read. I have been quoting (and attributing)excerpts from this book on my Facebook page to educate and encourage others to read. Today, I posted about the French agronomist that created "rebar" to better pot orange trees.....
May 17, 2007
An interesting take on the big shots of the last 1,000 years.
July 28, 2011
After 327 people, I became a bit bored. It was very interesting though to learn about these people and the difference they made.
November 23, 2013
Love this book! I always like "top ten" lists, and this takes it to a whole other level as you can debate the merits of the contributions of famous people over the last 10 centuries.
May 30, 2015
great tidbits of info. don't get hung up on the rankings!
Read
January 8, 2017Person Number One: Johannes Gutenberg
Person Number One Thousand: Andy Warhol
Person Number One Thousand: Andy Warhol
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews