Product Description

The conventional view of Genghis Khan as a ruthless leader who destroyed societies is turned on its head in this New York Times bestseller. Scholar and researcher Jack Weatherford shows how Khan was the first ruler to grant religious freedom and how he instituted diplomatic immunity and outlawed torture. Most significantly, Weatherford demonstrates how Khan was responsible for uniting East and West, laying the foundations for the modern nation-state and global economic systems. This truly is revisionist history at its very best.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43778 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Customer Reviews

Very Good
This book offers a well laid out history that is both easy to follow and an interesting read. The description of the life and times of Genghis Khan are well complimented by the concluding chapters covering Genghis Khan's impact; after death and importantly, today.

A must-read
This is one of those rare and irresistable books, which provide another side of the coin (history). A truly facinating book with detailed facts and descriptions making it both a very good read and thought-provoking one.

Read this, and Change your world
This is not just a history, it is re-invention of our world. No one has told Genghis Khan 's story as effectively. Texts by other
historians like Paul Ratchnevsky may consult more primary sources [JW bases his work on the Secret History of the Mongols, Juvayni, and Rashid-ad-Din, Ratchnevsky consults some additional Chinese sources like the Shenwu qinzheng lu]. Texts such as Saunders may be more scholarly and are more nuanced in their conclusions, but this footnote-free story (notes are indexed to sentences only at the end) is eminently readable, and like Timothy May has said in a review, it is the kind of writing that, unlike "dusty monographs", can fire one's "love for history".

Writing with rare lyrical sensitivity, Weatherford brings across a dramatic narrative of the military conquests. The first part deals with Genghis Khan consolidating the tribes of Mongolia (Chapters 2-3). Most of the book (Chapters 4-8), deals with world conquest. Genghis Khan launched his series of conquests when in his late 40s, and within fifteen years (1212 to his death in 1227), he had conquered four times the territory of the Roman or Macedonian empires at their peak; after his death, it would be grow half as much larger.

However, the most interesting aspect of the book is its discussion of the impact of this large trade-friendly empire, lasting over 200 years, may have had (Chapter 9). Printing, firearms, the use of the compass in navigation, bowed instruments such as the violin, all came to Europe through Mongol interactions. Furthermore, processes such as codification of laws, lightning mobility in war (the inspiration for Nazi "blitzkrieg"), religious freedom, and participative government, all taken for granted today, were practiced in the Mongol Empire and may have influenced European thinking during the Renaissance that immediately followed the breakup of the empire.

Maybe he over-dramatizes things when saying: "Under the widespread influences from the paper and printing, gunpowder and firearms, and the spread of the navigational compass and other maritime equipment, Europeans experienced a Renaissance, literally a rebirth, but it was not the ancient world of Greece or Rome being reborn. It was the Mongol Empire, picked up, transferred, and adapted by the Europeans to their own needs and culture." But on the whole he presents overwhelming evidence of our debt to the Mongols, an aspect that was covered up during the Age of Enlightenment (Chapter 10 deals with this historiographical process).

I found the book extremely thought-provoking; it led me to read Ratchnevsky and I am now looking through Saunders. I also went to several online sources simply to verify the claims he makes; I found most of them well-corroborated. Reading this book was absolutely eye-opening. It has completely changed my world view.