Selected Product:
| Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Paperback
Author: Jack Weatherford
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Release Date: 2005-03-22
ISBN-10: 0609809644
ISBN-13: 9780609809648
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-?ve years than the Romans did in four hundred. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege. From the story of his rise through the tribal culture to the explosion of civilization that the Mongol Empire unleashed, this brilliant work of revisionist history is nothing less than the epic story of how the modern world was made.
Exceptional Scholarship; Exceptional Interpretation
| Customer Rating: | Jack Weatherford combines scholarship and historical interpretation to bring Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes to life. It is a compelling read and the reader comes away exceptionally well informed about the principal events relating to the Mongol Empire and indeed, the principal forces at work in the thirteenth century. Weatherford begins with the minutiae of Genghis Khan's childhood, carries the story south into China, and west through Central Asia and Eastern Europe, ending in the retreat of the empire after the death of the last Great Khan.
Weatherford makes a compelling case for Mongol "universalism." "Because they had no system of their own to impose upon their subjects, they were willing to adopt and combine systems from everywhere. Without deep cultural preferences in these areas, the Mongols implemented pragmatic rather than ideological solutions...The Mongols had the power...to impose new international systems of technology, agriculture, and knowledge that superseded the predilections or prejudices of any single civilization and in so doing, they broke the monopoly on thought exercised by local elites."
The principal theme of this book is Weatherford's assertion that "in conquering their empire, not only had the Mongols revolutionized warfare, they also created the nucleus of a universal culture and world system." In a case of what the State Department calls "clientitis," the author asserts that this "universalism" became the basis for modern civilization. "This new global culture continued to grow long after the demise of the Mongol Empire, and through continued development over the coming centuries, it became the foundation for the modern world system with the original Mongol emphases on free commerce, open communication, shared knowledge, secular politics, religious coexistence, international law and diplomatic immunity."
We will all have to agree about the remarkable influence exerted by the Mongols in innumerable walks of life, and we should give credit where credit is due. It will be up to the individual reader, however, whether to accept the author's assertion that the European Renaissance, signifying rebirth, "was not the ancient world of Greece and Rome being reborn: It was the Mongol Empire, picked up, transferred, and adapted by the Europeans to their own needs and culture." If so, The Great Khan would be very pleased.
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A MUST READ
| Customer Rating: | | Everyone that is interested in politics should read this book. It is truely amazing. I traveled to Mongolia this summer and the Mongolians truely lookup to Chengis Khan and for good reason. |
What a book!
| Customer Rating: | | I couldn't put this book down. If you're interested in the Mongols, or Khan himself, or history, or just want a great read, this would be the book to buy. It will make all other history books read like dry text books. |
Genghis Kahn as you never knew him
| Customer Rating: | | This is a superb history of Genghis Kahn and the Mongol Hords, without the European and Islamic biases that go with it. The Mongol conquerers and rulers come across as more competent and, dare I say it, more tolerant than the people they conquered, albeit part of the same milieu of conquering, taking spoils of war, and enslaving as most people of their day. As rulers they actually understood economics and commerce better than most and brought prosperity and stability the the worlds they ruled. |
No pleasure domes.
| Customer Rating: | Im not going to rehash the story because others here have done it thoroughly. The book was easy to read and seems to fly in the face of the usual opinion of Genghis Kahn as a blood thirsty rapist mongrel. Apparently new original documents surfaced after the fall of the Soviet Union and scholars got together to pin down the real story.
I too wondered about the missing reference to geneticist's discovery about his Y chromosome, which appears to show that he might just have been the most prolific lover in the last couple of millennia! But not having those facts on hand, like where did they get his dna from anyway since his grave has never been discovered.
Also missing is Coleridge's poem
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
It was interesting to realize that the wives actually administered the kingdoms because the Kahns were off making war. Genghis seemed to have loved his wife a great deal according the the documents plus he did battle for her after she was kidnapped. When she returned pregnant he raised the son as his very own. He seemed to turn out to be his best son. The author is kind of sappy. He is always comparing Genghis to the roman catholic church which slaughtered countless people at the same time Genghis was roaming around. |
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