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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
If you want to understand current world politics, this is definitely a must-read (and I don't say that often). It gave an amazing, coherent explanation of what happened in the 'Silk Road area' over hundreds of years in a writing style that was engaging and entertaining.
Really disappointing. After the first half of the book promised a history written from the perspective of the Middle East. After attacking European/American historians for pushing a history of the world focused on the inevitable rise of the West, Frankopan goes on to do exactly the same thing.
Working out of the UK it must have been too tempting to use British sources, and as a result the political and cultural developments within the Middle East are examined only in passing once the British show up on the scene.
This unfortunately book fails on its own premises, but may serve adequately as an introductory world history.
Working out of the UK it must have been too tempting to use British sources, and as a result the political and cultural developments within the Middle East are examined only in passing once the British show up on the scene.
This unfortunately book fails on its own premises, but may serve adequately as an introductory world history.
A superb book. I thought I was reasonably well-informed about world history, but this brought so many new facts and ideas to light in a gripping narrative. I can only echo this amazon reviewer "The Silk Roads certainly opened my eyes to the West's grasping, greedy and bullying past."
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Well-written, easy to read, and extremely informative. I would have given five stars, but the maps are small, hard to read, and there aren't nearly enough to keep up with the quick changes that take place in the first third of the book.
This is a quirky and uneven book and is hard to recommend. Any history "of the world" is going to be a complicated exercise in subject matter selection, but even for a book called "Silk Roads" the subjects here seem to be more about the author's areas of interest than anything else. This history of the world has virtually nothing about Africa, the Americas, or China (a terminus of the Silk Road). There is literally more here about the Iran-Contra scandal than about China. There are only two or three paragraphs total about the successor states to the Soviet Union--which happen to be precisely in the area most often associated with the Silk Road. Never mind that the author's main thesis--that we are in the process of the building of a "new Silk Road" with vastly improved communications and trade connections across Central Aisa--is both fully unsupported and totally wrong. I remember when I was Charge d'Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Uzbekistan I started saying "every time you hear the words 'New Silk Road' you can be sure everything you hear after that will be bullshit." There are some embarrassing errors of fact which really call into doubt the author's familiarity with the subject material: he described the Soviet hammer and sickle as "emblems of the tools of the urban proletariat" when of course the really represent the union of the urban proletariat (the hammer) and the rural agricultural workers (the sickle.) What would the urban proletariat do with sickles? Behead each other? He describes sandalwood as a spice, and napalm as a gas. And he calls the Bismarck and the Tirpitz "armored cruisers" but worse, gives the impression that they were actively roaming the seas disrupting Allied trade when in fact the combined impact of both on the war was the Bismarck's single fatal expedition. I will say that Frankopan does a good job of pointing out the hypocrisy and double dealing of the U.S. and before them, the British Empire in their dealings with the Middle East and Central Asia. The flaws in the text are compounded by some really subpar voice work on the part of the reader. He ludicrously mispronounces many place names--Azerbaijan with the "j" pronounced as a "Y" seriously? And worse, he does voices to indicate quotes. I understand the challenge posed to an audio book reader to indicate quotes, but this reader's choice is to put on absurd accents he thinks consistent with the person being quoted.
These range of the laugh out out absurd for Americans -- where he does White House spokesman Ari Fleischer as a Jazz Age newsboy -- music hall parody accents of Indians and Middle Easterners that border on offensive. Anyway, this should probably be a skip.
These range of the laugh out out absurd for Americans -- where he does White House spokesman Ari Fleischer as a Jazz Age newsboy -- music hall parody accents of Indians and Middle Easterners that border on offensive. Anyway, this should probably be a skip.
Maybe have high schoolers read this instead of taking AP World? I highly recommend to any history lovers and those interested in patterns of the rise, fall, and rebirth of world powers and cultures. I would also recommend to anyone to just read the last 100-200 ages, assuming you’re like me and know very little about the fallout in the Middle East after WWII that has led to the continued mess we’re in.
A book that competently shatters the illusion that there was ever a time when history wasn't defined first and foremost by the greed of its rulers.
En god—og helt sikkert forutinntatt—bok om hvor stor påvirkning handelsrutene har hatt på verdenshistorien. Den forsøker å presse inn en så grov mengde med informasjon på 500 sider at du behøver både fullt fokus og penn og papir for å lære særlig, men allikevel spennende selv om man skulle velge å ikke behandle det som en fagbok. Gir også et godt bilde på hvor komplisert moderne verdenshistorie er. Alt var bedre før.