"Frederic J. Baumgartner explores the long, often violent, history of millennialism as it has affected Western Civilization. From the ancient Zoroastrians to the Concerned Christians of 1998, a belief in the imminent end of the present world and the coming of the new age has motivated hundreds of sects and cults, some of which have burned out in an orgy of violence to become a permanent part of Western history. Not confined to cults, millennialism has also been part of the motivation behind the Crusades, Columbus's voyages, Marxism, and the Third Reich. In this work, Baumgartner shows why the turn of the millennium occupies such a powerful place in the Western imagination. "--BOOK JACKET.