Conversations about the End of Time(1998)

Jean-Claude CarrièreCatherine DavidJean Delumeau

A mind-expanding discussion of millenarianism by four brilliant thinkers — now in paperback.

There is nothing special about the year 2000, yet the start of the third millennium proved a focus for many deep anxieties and expectations. Four of the world's boldest and most celebrated thinkers offer a vast range of insights into how we make sense of time: paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould on dating the Creation, evolutionary "deep time," and the need for ecological ethics on a human scale; Umberto Eco, novelist, medievalist, and Web fanatic, on the brave new world of cyberspace and its likely impact on memory, cultural continuity, and access to knowledge; screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière on "the art of slowness" and attitudes toward time in non-Western cultures; and Catholic historian Jean Delumeau on how the Western imagination has always been haunted by ideas of the Apocalypse.

Stephen Jay Gould is the author of The Panda's Thumb and Umberto Eco of The Name of the Rose. Jean Claude Carrière has written screenplays for Milos Forman and Luis Buñuel. Jean Delumeau teaches history at the Collège de France.

"If you have to read one book about the millennium, this is it!" (The Times [London])

"The insights these well-rounded scholars provide are thought-provoking and revelatory." (Booklist)

"A fascinating, mind-expanding gallop through theology, paleontology, calendrical history, millenarianism, philosophy and cyberspace." (Sunday Herald [London])