The Silk Roads

The sun is setting on the Western world. Slowly but surely, the direction in which the world spins has reversed: where for the last five centuries the globe turned westwards on its axis, it now turns to the 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. 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 A book of dazzling range, ambition and achievement -- William Dalrymple 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 Fernandez 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 Bold and ambitious Tablet Full of intriguing insights and fascinating details -- Anthony Sattin Observer With extraordinary erudition and a vivid style, [Frankopan] takes us on a dazzling tour ... from the rise of the first empires right through to the present Open (Weekly) It's the details that win it. Did you know that Attila's Huns wore coats made from mouse skin? Sunday Express