The Silk Roads: A New History of the World - Hardcover

Frankopan, Professor Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408839970 ISBN 13: 9781408839973

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015

Synopsis

The No. 1 Sunday Times and international bestseller - a major reassessment of world history in light of the economic and political renaissance in the re-emerging east

For centuries, fame and fortune was to be found in the west - in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of adventure and riches. The region stretching from eastern Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China and India, is taking centre stage in international politics, commerce and culture - and is shaping the modern world.

This region, the true centre of the earth, is obscure to many in the English-speaking world. Yet this is where civilization itself began, where the world's great religions were born and took root. The Silk Roads were no exotic series of connections, but networks that linked continents and oceans together. Along them flowed ideas, goods, disease and death. This was where empires were won - and where they were lost. As a new era emerges, the patterns of exchange are mirroring those that have criss-crossed Asia for millennia. The Silk Roads are rising again.

A major reassessment of world history, The Silk Roads is an important account of the forces that have shaped the global economy and the political renaissance in the re-emerging east.

About this title

Review:

Brilliant and fearlessly wide-ranging . undaunted by the complexity of the material, and the scale of the subject he has taken on, Frankopan marches briskly through the centuries, disguising his erudition with an enviable lightness of touch, enlivening his narrative with a beautifully constructed web of anecdotes and insights, backed up by an impressively wide-ranging scholarly apparatus of footnotes drawing on works in multiple languages . This is history on a grand scale, with a sweep and ambition that is rare . a remarkable book on many levels, a proper historical epic of dazzling range and achievement (William Dalrymple, Books of the Year Guardian)

Breathtaking and addictively readable - History Book of the Year (Daily Telegraph)

Many books have been written which claim to be "A New History of the World". This one fully deserves the title.It is difficult, in a short review, to do justice to a book so ambitious, so detailed and so fascinating as this one (Gerald DeGroot The Times)

The author's gift for vividness is reminiscent of Jan Morris, while his command of revealing facts or fancies is not far short of Gibbon's (Felipe Fernández Armesto Literary Review)

A book that roves as widely as the geography it describes, encompassing worlds as far removed as those of Herodotus and Saddam Hussein, Hammurabi and Hitler.It is a tribute to Frankopan's scholarship and mastery of sources in multiple languages that he is as sure-footed on the ancient world as he is on the medieval and modern (Justin Marozzi The Sunday Times)

Splendid ... tightly researched ... invigorating and profound [with] enough storytelling to excite the reader and enough fresh scholarship to satisfy the intellect...charismatic and essential (Dr Bettany Hughes Daily Telegraph)

The Silk Roads, which covers several continents and many centuries, is based on astonishingly wide and deep reading and in all areas draws on the latest research...it is full of vivid and recondite details (Independent)

This is, to put it mildly, an ambitious book...Frankopan writes with clarity and memorable detail (Economist)

Timely . it deserves a place by the library fireplace (Country Life)

Dazzlingly good ... [Frankopan blends] deep scholarly skill with a real literary talent (Dan Jones Evening Standard)

Book Description:

The No. 1 Sunday Times and international bestseller - a major reassessment of world history in light of the economic and political renaissance in the re-emerging east

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1408839970
• ISBN 13: 9781408839973
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 656