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brynhammond's review against another edition
1.0
I have two main reasons for my harsh allotment of one star – a rating to be read as a ‘cannot recommend’ from me; not exactly ‘I hated it’, although I did become emotional on going through 8-10 newspaper reviews: these were written by book critics, not experts or fans of Mongol history, and they had nothing to judge by except their general impressions of the Mongols, preconceptions which the book, more or less, confirmed. Only one I saw, in the Asian Review of Books, asked a few of the right questions and began to interrogate the book.
My first reason is that it pays little attention to what David Morgan has called ‘the cultural turn’ in Mongol scholarship of the last twenty years (he reported on this in [b:Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change|22828778|Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors|Reuven Amitai-Preiss|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1421012178l/22828778._SX50_.jpg|42382470]). Even though McLynn has the begetter of the cultural turn, Thomas Allsen, in his extensive bibliography, this area, that is spoken of as a revolution in how we look at Mongols, doesn’t figure in his assessment of them in conclusion, and I feel that assessment is severely afflicted by its absence.
My second reason is that he comes to opinions about things and presents them as if they are matters of fact. I’ll use an example that did the circuit of the web, one he cites in interviews: that the Daoist master Qiu Chuji was a fraudster and Temujin, late in life, his gullible victim. That Qiu Chuji was a fraud is an opinion (you can find an alternate opinion in Wang Ping’s 2013 movie, An End to Killing or Kingdom of Conquerors – decent movie and even educational, to offset McLynn). But you can't in logic claim he set out to dupe a victim, when in the sources the guy is known for his frankness in the face of Genghis Khan, for dropping the bad news that he doesn’t have or know of a magic elixir, and contrary to rumour he is not 300 years old. Let’s not hear about gullible Mongols, either, because it’s a few of Temujin’s more educated Chinese advisers who recommended Qiu Chuji to him. That leads me to the observation that this Daoist adept behaved and believed no differently to others, and to call him a big fraud is to tarnish the lot of them, isn’t it? I think we need to accept more the strangenesses of medieval religions. Addendum: on Mongol religion he says, ‘shamanism was a classic instance of the mystifying and obfuscating role of religion’, which is rather judgemental too. This blanket dismissal, this failure to look at a religion in its own terms wouldn't wash in Religious Studies 101. I hope he's one who'd say the same of Western religions of the past; yet I have to notice he has been a biographer of only Western figures previously. Hobby Mongolists can do good work, but they need good attitudes.
On the personality of Genghis, he is very negative; probably as negative a description as I’ve read, even in old books that pre-date the 'cultural turn' and the great florescence of Mongol Studies since (again, the main books I mean are in his bibliography, but I can't see they have influenced his text). I admit his negative view doesn’t endear the book to me. It was disheartening to see one of those newspaper reviews conclude 'Genghis Khan doesn't deserve a biographer like McLynn'. He does. He does deserve a 'real' biographer, as distinct from a historian who doesn't specialize in biography. For a thirteenth-century figure and not someone from the letters era, he's rich in potential material. Don't blame the subject if you found the book unsatisfactory! Still, negativity and all, as long as readers understand they are getting one view… The book is told as story, and in a common popular-history style he writes as if questions are concluded. Behind that, at every turn he has to make decisions and judgements on the material. I wish this process were more transparent to the reader – that it was written with less certainty, that there were alternate views on offer. Such, I'd say, is the main difference between popular history and scholarly--although I have seen popular history written in an open-ended fashion too, presenting the evidence in a way that leaves the reader room to think.
My first reason is that it pays little attention to what David Morgan has called ‘the cultural turn’ in Mongol scholarship of the last twenty years (he reported on this in [b:Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change|22828778|Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors|Reuven Amitai-Preiss|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1421012178l/22828778._SX50_.jpg|42382470]). Even though McLynn has the begetter of the cultural turn, Thomas Allsen, in his extensive bibliography, this area, that is spoken of as a revolution in how we look at Mongols, doesn’t figure in his assessment of them in conclusion, and I feel that assessment is severely afflicted by its absence.
My second reason is that he comes to opinions about things and presents them as if they are matters of fact. I’ll use an example that did the circuit of the web, one he cites in interviews: that the Daoist master Qiu Chuji was a fraudster and Temujin, late in life, his gullible victim. That Qiu Chuji was a fraud is an opinion (you can find an alternate opinion in Wang Ping’s 2013 movie, An End to Killing or Kingdom of Conquerors – decent movie and even educational, to offset McLynn). But you can't in logic claim he set out to dupe a victim, when in the sources the guy is known for his frankness in the face of Genghis Khan, for dropping the bad news that he doesn’t have or know of a magic elixir, and contrary to rumour he is not 300 years old. Let’s not hear about gullible Mongols, either, because it’s a few of Temujin’s more educated Chinese advisers who recommended Qiu Chuji to him. That leads me to the observation that this Daoist adept behaved and believed no differently to others, and to call him a big fraud is to tarnish the lot of them, isn’t it? I think we need to accept more the strangenesses of medieval religions. Addendum: on Mongol religion he says, ‘shamanism was a classic instance of the mystifying and obfuscating role of religion’, which is rather judgemental too. This blanket dismissal, this failure to look at a religion in its own terms wouldn't wash in Religious Studies 101. I hope he's one who'd say the same of Western religions of the past; yet I have to notice he has been a biographer of only Western figures previously. Hobby Mongolists can do good work, but they need good attitudes.
On the personality of Genghis, he is very negative; probably as negative a description as I’ve read, even in old books that pre-date the 'cultural turn' and the great florescence of Mongol Studies since (again, the main books I mean are in his bibliography, but I can't see they have influenced his text). I admit his negative view doesn’t endear the book to me. It was disheartening to see one of those newspaper reviews conclude 'Genghis Khan doesn't deserve a biographer like McLynn'. He does. He does deserve a 'real' biographer, as distinct from a historian who doesn't specialize in biography. For a thirteenth-century figure and not someone from the letters era, he's rich in potential material. Don't blame the subject if you found the book unsatisfactory! Still, negativity and all, as long as readers understand they are getting one view… The book is told as story, and in a common popular-history style he writes as if questions are concluded. Behind that, at every turn he has to make decisions and judgements on the material. I wish this process were more transparent to the reader – that it was written with less certainty, that there were alternate views on offer. Such, I'd say, is the main difference between popular history and scholarly--although I have seen popular history written in an open-ended fashion too, presenting the evidence in a way that leaves the reader room to think.
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