"When the long-haired star appeared in the heavens a week and a day after Easter in the year of Our Lord 1066, all God-fearing men knew that it was meant to portend some great event in the history of mankind." Thus begins the novel 1066, which records "the hitherto undiscovered recollections of Oswulf the Englishman" to chronicle the Norman conquest of England. This carefully researched work depicts in vivid detail an era characterized as much by intense piety as by brutal violence. It is a world peopled by Vikings and saints, popes and warriors, and by such historical personages as Macbeth...