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Title: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford ISBN: 0-609-61062-7 Publisher: Crown Publishers Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Extraordinary work!
Comment: In my opinion this is the best book written on the life of Genghis Khan. There is a variety of reasons for this assessment. First and the far most important reason is the ease of reading in Weatherford's style. He has kept details succinct and facts precise and relevant to the events at issue. The book is a testament of Weatherford's extensive research and grasp over Mongolian 'Secret History.' I recommend this book to all the readers indiscriminative of their previous knowledge on Genghis Khan. The book is not simply a historical reference, but also an analytical study in to the mind of Genghis Khan, and the strategies he employed in enhancing his campaigns, economy and diplomacy. I was quite impressed with Genghis Khan's approach on the legal system he developed for the conquered tribes and nations. In many aspects this illiterate Khan was applying the legal theories that were yet to be debated in the rest of the world. Religion and legal autonomy of local states was surprising. Genghis Khan left religion to the individuals and encouraged the legislation of local laws so long as they are not in conflict with the Supreme Mongol law, a concept American constitutional law scholars and judiciary confronted more than six hundred years later!
Rating: 5
Summary: Wow What a Great Book!
Comment: I recently made a discovery while browsing through the new releases at the bookstore. With no intentions of buying the book I read the first few pages. Once I had read the introduction taken from a 1989 story in the Washington Post I was hooked. The author Jack Weatherford is a professor of anthropology in Minnesota and has done a terrific job of creating an interesting read. Once you start the read it is hard to stop. As part of his research he spent time in Khan's former homeland of Mongolia doing in depth studies, interviews, research, and even camping on the steppes. He has included many references, notes, and comments at the end of this 300 page book including a glossary of Mongol terms.
When one thinks of great historical figures, the Mongols and Genghis Khan are not the first names that pop into your mind. But here is a boy, raised in dire poverty and living right on the edge of survival in central Asia approximately 800 years ago, that somehow survives, and then who rose from insignificance to become a leader of the region. He started a family that conquered most of Asia from Hungary to Korea, from India and China to Russia and south to Israel - and all areas between, and left huge foot prints that lasted hundreds of years in an area of the globe where most people (60%) of the earth lived. He did this with a small group of peoples - the Mongols - and they became the masters of all they could find. It is sort of similar to someone conquering Asia and Europe with the Swiss army, and then changing the histories of these vast regions forever. He amalgamated Russia and China from a series of provinces, created Korea, among other things, and left in place an organization that lasted over 200 years.
Khan and his sons succeeded through a combination of mobile forces, quick action, and later propaganda. Many peoples when hearing that they were coming simply surrendered. The Mongols were known as a small tribe of scavengers on the northern Asian steppes near the Siberia forests, and are descendents of the Huns that had attacked Rome. "Hunting, trading, herding, and fighting formed a seamless web of subsistence". The author tries to paint a very detailed picture in the format of a semi-biographical novel all in chronological order that must contain a certain amount of fiction to fill in all the biographical details (see Secret History reference in the book). But it all seems realistic and is compelling reading.
The book tells the story of the rise to power, seemingly year by year, battle by battle. At age 48 he controls Mongolia, but then with a change of power in Beijing, they (the Jurched) demand that he show submission to their power. That was not in his nature. Instead, he gathered his forces, crossed the vast Gobi region and invaded in groups of 10,000 men (like mobile divisions). The men took no "honor in fighting; they found honor in winning". Starting in 1211 it took him three years to reach the walls of Zhongdu (Beijing). Once that region was conquered he returned to Mongolia very wealthy and was content to stay there. But as his trade and other activities increased, the reach of the Mongols expanded and encountered hostile neighbors. When he sent friendly commercial travelers westward loaded with commercial goods, they were met with death by their unsuspecting neighbors - the Khwarizm campaign (Kazakhstan). The neighbors did not appreciate the retribution that would be unleashed by their actions. Incensed by their deeds, Khan invaded killing their soldiers and aristocrats, and then running the societies according to his own laws.
Next he tried to pass his holdings onto his sons. But when they were divided and quarreling, so he sent them out to conquer new areas covering much of Asia and Europe. The story continues on into the middle of the 14th century and the great plague when the role of the Mongols diminished.
We can all learn a lot by reading this book including part of Khan's philosophy, i.e. you can conquer an army by force but one can only win a nation by winning the hearts and minds of the people - to paraphrase. It still seems to be applicable.
Excellent book. Five stars.
Jack in Toronto
Rating: 5
Summary: A Singular Man, Shaping History
Comment: This is a revisionist history (isn't it all?) of a truly remarkable figure, who created an empire greater even than the Romans, and he did it from scratch in just a few decades. He was a law-giver who essentially outlawed the culture he came from--transforming it from a Scots-like clan of cattle rustlers and raiders, to a monolithic, highly disciplined cavalry of conquerers. He devised entirely new military tactics that were as successful against the cities of the Chinese as against the armored knights of the West. And they started out as a people, he claims, who did not even know how to weave cloth!
Weatherford here takes up the challenge of accenting the positive impact of his brutal conquests. Among other things he makes the case for his setting the West up for the Renaissance, the introduction of paper money, the postal system, Religious tolerance, and new vegetables. He bases much of this on new scholarship, rather than the hysterical propaganda of the aristocrats whom he threatened. Partly based on the mysterious "Secret History of the Mongols," the author's own travels in Mongolia, and contacts with Mongolian revivalists, he makes this bit of history accessible even to the most prejudiced reader.
Strangely omitted, though, is the fascinating tale that the geneticists have discovered about his Y chromosome, which appears to show that he might just have been the most prolific lover in the last couple of millennia! Too recent, maybe.
One of the remarkable features of his style was that he hated the elite and the aristocrats, and slaughtered as many as he could. He loved the professional men, the teachers and doctors, and especially the craftsmen and engineers, and did not even tax them. My kinda guy!
Weatherford's style of writing is lively and easy to read. The maps are just detailed enough to be informative without overburdening the reader in detail. This is not an exhaustive account of every battle, every city destroyed, which would be mind-numbing history as usually written, but rather a wide survey of events and their impact on the world to come. And I especially enjoyed his description of the military tactics employed by the cavalry, and his use of siege engines and gunpowder, which would be new to most readers.
Perhaps one of his greatest inventions, though, is that of diplomatic immunity. Any city, and there were several, who murdered or mutilated his envoys as a method of rejecting his terms of surrender, would be ruthlessly razed and the inhabitants slaughtered. Even in those days, the word got around...
This is quite a tale, well told.
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Title: Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland ISBN: 038550313X Publisher: Doubleday Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow ISBN: 1594200092 Publisher: The Penguin Press Pub. Date: 26 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Stalin : The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore ISBN: 1400042305 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 13 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto ISBN: 0385503490 Publisher: Doubleday Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Genghis Khan or the Emperor of All Men by Harold Lamb ISBN: 0766144151 Publisher: Kessinger Publishing Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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