When was the legend of millennial fear born? Do we need new Utopia? Why does the number 2000 mean so much to us? Is it the biblical notion of the end of time equivalent to the notion of the end of history? When did people start to measure the real length of time? Are dreams our real victory over time?

In a series of unusually thought-provoking conversation,Umberto Eco, Stephen Jay Gould, Jean Delumeau and Jean Claude Carrière examines preocupations at the end of millenium, cast back to the fear and hopes of previous generation, and consider the challenge to come. Mixing the humorous with the profound, they tackle a vast range of fundemental questions which have long taxed the minds of not only our greatest thinkers, but of most of the rest of us too.