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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Genghis Kahn is a pretty fascinating figure - standard Nomad to greatest world conqueror ever. His life and his conquests are still felt today.
This was a good, detailed book that is also a pretty fair accounting of his life. Most books either deify him or dehumanize him, but this struck a pretty balanced approach in my opinion.
This was a good, detailed book that is also a pretty fair accounting of his life. Most books either deify him or dehumanize him, but this struck a pretty balanced approach in my opinion.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Genghis. He always seemed like a man who did not understand the word no, who simply did not know how to give up, who would take what he wanted, preferably when he wanted, but if not, he would come back later and take it. Apart from the basic knowledge, one of my earliest experiences of Genghis was in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, not a classic historical study, but a film that did make me think about figures of the past that I would love to meet if I had the chance.
Next up was Conn Iggulden’s Conqueror series, a fictional series of Genghis’s life, although largely based on fact, it gave me a much broader understanding of Genghis, although from what I remember, and correct me if I’m wrong Conn, painted him in an entirely flattering light.
But I heard rumours, I saw odd excerpts of his more dastardly actions, the mass killings and destruction of cities, he was, they claimed, terrible. A cruel despot who sated his blood lust with an orgy of death.
The Man Who Conquered The World is a detailed, richly painted narrative of Genghis’s life. From his early days of Temujin to the ruler of the biggest empire in the world.
The sheer number of names to remember means as a casual reader it can be difficult to keep up, there is a list of names at the beginning, and although I started flicking back to it at first, I soon gave up and lost myself in the endless stream of people, going back only occasionally if someone popped up who seemed of interest.
If you can put up with his tendency to use elaborate terms when more simple ones would suffice, which irritated me a lot more than I thought it would, McLynn’s book contains an abundance of information, set down in an informative if not mostly entertaining way. He details the sources of his information, pointing out where they are likely to be accurate or biased and the reasons for this, and where there is no information available, his assumptions seem well founded and reasonable.
Genghis took a fractured nomadic people and united them into an unstoppable war machine that conquered and subsumed entire populations, separating the artists from everyone else, but absorbing the existing administration into the Mongol whole. The initial struggle to besiege Chinese cities was remedied by learning from and incorporating Chinese siege tactics and machines into the Mongol arsenal. From the beginning, his inclination to promote based on merit rather than heritage set him apart from the other Khans, including his childhood friend Jamuga, and also built him up an incredible group of generals and leaders, as well as administrators and vassals.
Chinqai’s administrative genius was twofold. First, he had to solve problems caused by the Mongol’s ignorance of sedentary populations. The Mongols were nomads and warriors and had no one trained for the task of administration. Nor were they linguists, and in their raw state they knew nothing of a money economy. They therefore had to depend on literate, multilingual members of the very nations they had conquered. Like the British in the nineteenth century, they had to rule vast numbers with a tiny bureaucratic force and like them depended on quislings and converts to the Mongol vision of global conquest.
After his ascendancy to Genghis Khan, Genghis built his empire on reward, knowing if he kept his army and his subjects in booty they were less likely to rebel or scheme against him. It was the main reason for the ever increasing expansion, and the main reason why, at times he massacred populations, it removed the risk of attack once his army had moved on, deeper into what was at the time, enemy territory, and also reduced the administrative burden on the relatively small native Mongol population. Cold? yes, Calculated? Certainly, but here was a man whose vision was black and white, there was little room for grey, and if there was, it wasn’t tolerated for long.
For me, perhaps the greatest achievement of Genghis was the promotion of the those who showed talent, regardless of where they came from. He was a great reader of men, and had no racial or religious prejudice. Effectively delegating the conquest of China to his favourite general Muqali, while taking his sons to conquer central Asia and the middle east, and sending Subedei and Jebe on a great raid that introduced Europe to the Mongols.
Subedei may have been the master strategist but there is no reason to dissent from the view that Jebe was ‘probably the greatest cavalry general in the history of the world’. Eight hundred years later the scale of his achievement with Subedei on their great raid is still astonishing. In three years the two captains and their men rode 5,500 miles – history’s longest cavalry raid – won seven major battles (always against superior numbers) and several minor engagements and skirmishes, sacked scores of cities and revealed the world of Russia and eastern Europe to Genghis. Subedei made sure that this would be no evanescent achievement by leaving behind him a whole cadre of spies and secret agents who would keep the Mongols informed of all future developments in the West.
These generals were given great power and responsibility by Genghis, and although he could be paranoid and capricious, he rewarded handsomely those who served him well. There were times when some were rewarded perhaps more than they should have been and others, inexplicably not given the rewards they deserved. There were other flaws of course, Genghis was by no means perfect, and there were a few he indulged a little too much or for a little too long, particularly his family. Although he was furious with them if they did not do as instructed or rebelled against him, in some cases they were given leeway to repeat their transgressions two or three times.
Despite his abilities as a tactician, leader and strategist, his detail on organisation of his army, down to the night guards that protected him as he slept, the operation of the army, that could be split in two but regroup in less than a day, McLynn posits that potentially the ‘Mongol’ empire or conquest was likely to fail, in that they had to always expand and conquer due to their nomadic lifestyle and Genghis’s reward system. Eventually they would have run out of territory to conquer or would have had to become sedentary, giving up the nomadic lifestyle which had given them their tactical advantage. After his death, the empire was divided between his sons, which went on to cause civil war as, growing up in a world where the strongest take what they want, they jostled for the top position.
So, after reading a good 500 pages, is my soft spot still there? Yes. Genghis was someone who had vision, and an unwavering belief in what he wanted, and felt, he was meant to, achieve. Ultimately he achieved it all, at great cost to those in his way, but to great reward for those that aided him. McLynn’s book does well to reveal the man behind the legend.
(blog review here)
Next up was Conn Iggulden’s Conqueror series, a fictional series of Genghis’s life, although largely based on fact, it gave me a much broader understanding of Genghis, although from what I remember, and correct me if I’m wrong Conn, painted him in an entirely flattering light.
But I heard rumours, I saw odd excerpts of his more dastardly actions, the mass killings and destruction of cities, he was, they claimed, terrible. A cruel despot who sated his blood lust with an orgy of death.
The Man Who Conquered The World is a detailed, richly painted narrative of Genghis’s life. From his early days of Temujin to the ruler of the biggest empire in the world.
The sheer number of names to remember means as a casual reader it can be difficult to keep up, there is a list of names at the beginning, and although I started flicking back to it at first, I soon gave up and lost myself in the endless stream of people, going back only occasionally if someone popped up who seemed of interest.
If you can put up with his tendency to use elaborate terms when more simple ones would suffice, which irritated me a lot more than I thought it would, McLynn’s book contains an abundance of information, set down in an informative if not mostly entertaining way. He details the sources of his information, pointing out where they are likely to be accurate or biased and the reasons for this, and where there is no information available, his assumptions seem well founded and reasonable.
Genghis took a fractured nomadic people and united them into an unstoppable war machine that conquered and subsumed entire populations, separating the artists from everyone else, but absorbing the existing administration into the Mongol whole. The initial struggle to besiege Chinese cities was remedied by learning from and incorporating Chinese siege tactics and machines into the Mongol arsenal. From the beginning, his inclination to promote based on merit rather than heritage set him apart from the other Khans, including his childhood friend Jamuga, and also built him up an incredible group of generals and leaders, as well as administrators and vassals.
Chinqai’s administrative genius was twofold. First, he had to solve problems caused by the Mongol’s ignorance of sedentary populations. The Mongols were nomads and warriors and had no one trained for the task of administration. Nor were they linguists, and in their raw state they knew nothing of a money economy. They therefore had to depend on literate, multilingual members of the very nations they had conquered. Like the British in the nineteenth century, they had to rule vast numbers with a tiny bureaucratic force and like them depended on quislings and converts to the Mongol vision of global conquest.
After his ascendancy to Genghis Khan, Genghis built his empire on reward, knowing if he kept his army and his subjects in booty they were less likely to rebel or scheme against him. It was the main reason for the ever increasing expansion, and the main reason why, at times he massacred populations, it removed the risk of attack once his army had moved on, deeper into what was at the time, enemy territory, and also reduced the administrative burden on the relatively small native Mongol population. Cold? yes, Calculated? Certainly, but here was a man whose vision was black and white, there was little room for grey, and if there was, it wasn’t tolerated for long.
For me, perhaps the greatest achievement of Genghis was the promotion of the those who showed talent, regardless of where they came from. He was a great reader of men, and had no racial or religious prejudice. Effectively delegating the conquest of China to his favourite general Muqali, while taking his sons to conquer central Asia and the middle east, and sending Subedei and Jebe on a great raid that introduced Europe to the Mongols.
Subedei may have been the master strategist but there is no reason to dissent from the view that Jebe was ‘probably the greatest cavalry general in the history of the world’. Eight hundred years later the scale of his achievement with Subedei on their great raid is still astonishing. In three years the two captains and their men rode 5,500 miles – history’s longest cavalry raid – won seven major battles (always against superior numbers) and several minor engagements and skirmishes, sacked scores of cities and revealed the world of Russia and eastern Europe to Genghis. Subedei made sure that this would be no evanescent achievement by leaving behind him a whole cadre of spies and secret agents who would keep the Mongols informed of all future developments in the West.
These generals were given great power and responsibility by Genghis, and although he could be paranoid and capricious, he rewarded handsomely those who served him well. There were times when some were rewarded perhaps more than they should have been and others, inexplicably not given the rewards they deserved. There were other flaws of course, Genghis was by no means perfect, and there were a few he indulged a little too much or for a little too long, particularly his family. Although he was furious with them if they did not do as instructed or rebelled against him, in some cases they were given leeway to repeat their transgressions two or three times.
Despite his abilities as a tactician, leader and strategist, his detail on organisation of his army, down to the night guards that protected him as he slept, the operation of the army, that could be split in two but regroup in less than a day, McLynn posits that potentially the ‘Mongol’ empire or conquest was likely to fail, in that they had to always expand and conquer due to their nomadic lifestyle and Genghis’s reward system. Eventually they would have run out of territory to conquer or would have had to become sedentary, giving up the nomadic lifestyle which had given them their tactical advantage. After his death, the empire was divided between his sons, which went on to cause civil war as, growing up in a world where the strongest take what they want, they jostled for the top position.
So, after reading a good 500 pages, is my soft spot still there? Yes. Genghis was someone who had vision, and an unwavering belief in what he wanted, and felt, he was meant to, achieve. Ultimately he achieved it all, at great cost to those in his way, but to great reward for those that aided him. McLynn’s book does well to reveal the man behind the legend.
(blog review here)
challenging
informative
slow-paced
A book full of fascinating and interesting information about Genghis Khan and by extension the Mongols (the title is slightly misleading, more of an overview about the Mongols rise to power under the Khan), with lots of interesting nuggets of information here and there (the poisonous effect of alcohol on Mongol society was an interesting, if minor, tidbit to learn) albeit often sandwiched between an awful lot of detailed, yet tedious, descriptions around the military movements, campaigns and conquests of the Mongol armies. Once you got the picture of how the Mongols were so successful militarily (largely boiling down to superior logistics, communication, manoeuvrability and feigned retreats), although there are still some valuable threads contained within that redundancy, for example learning siege warfare from scratch (mainly vs. the Jin Chinese) to the point of successfully conquering many walled cities and fortresses.
The best parts were everything apart from the rote recitation of military movements, dissecting the few existing sources of Mongolia that existed at the time, from Genghis' rise through the ranks to unify the Steppe (by no means a surefire thing based on Steppe and Clan culture), bureaucracy built from its infancy in order to control tax, and integrate the massive sedentary population the nomadic Mongols had conquered and other such details. You just have to work for it, cutting through the numerous military campaigns. The writing style of McLynn doesn't do the subject much favours either, a strange mix of dry but also over-eloquent at times - often subtracting from the material rather than adding, unfortunately, given the breadth and depth of writing on show (and the numerous addendums such as the index of names, footnotes and other references). A worthwhile read, but one will have to continue the search for the definitive book around Genghis Khan and the rise of the Mongols.
The best parts were everything apart from the rote recitation of military movements, dissecting the few existing sources of Mongolia that existed at the time, from Genghis' rise through the ranks to unify the Steppe (by no means a surefire thing based on Steppe and Clan culture), bureaucracy built from its infancy in order to control tax, and integrate the massive sedentary population the nomadic Mongols had conquered and other such details. You just have to work for it, cutting through the numerous military campaigns. The writing style of McLynn doesn't do the subject much favours either, a strange mix of dry but also over-eloquent at times - often subtracting from the material rather than adding, unfortunately, given the breadth and depth of writing on show (and the numerous addendums such as the index of names, footnotes and other references). A worthwhile read, but one will have to continue the search for the definitive book around Genghis Khan and the rise of the Mongols.
This book is full of fascinating information on one of history's most fascinating figures. McLynn presents the facts of Genghis' life and legacy in as fair and balanced a way as one could hope for, neither glorifying nor disparaging, but acknowledging the complexity. He also manages to keep the reader focused amidst a whirlwind of names and places, no easy feat.
My one complaint is the pretentious writing style. McLynn claims to write a history more popular than academic, while at the same time filling the pages with Latin and French phrases. Here and there would have been acceptable, even expected, but constantly having to search through the extensive footnotes (compiled en masse at the end of the book) for translations is exhausting.
I recommend this book to those looking for a comprehensive study of Genghis, his empire, and its controversy. But, be forewarned. The writing style makes it a fairly difficult read.
My one complaint is the pretentious writing style. McLynn claims to write a history more popular than academic, while at the same time filling the pages with Latin and French phrases. Here and there would have been acceptable, even expected, but constantly having to search through the extensive footnotes (compiled en masse at the end of the book) for translations is exhausting.
I recommend this book to those looking for a comprehensive study of Genghis, his empire, and its controversy. But, be forewarned. The writing style makes it a fairly difficult read.
Way too dense, meandering, and at times subjective. It gave me a solid overview of everything, it’s quite interesting at times, but every conflict involves background info- that then requires more background info- and it ultimately becomes a bit convoluted, confusing, etc. I appreciate all the info, it just isn’t laid out as clearly as possible- every detail is delved into whenever it comes up, as opposed to just concentrating all that info together. Making a straightforward narrative of the mongols would be difficult, I get it, but it’s tough jumping from the Mongols, to Poland and Hungary, to Hungary, back to Poland, then to explain something from Polish history, to how that affects Europe, and oh ya the Mongols won the battle. You can follow it all, it’s just denser than necessary as written, imo. I also found some characterizations overly subjective- I don’t mind an author making their own opinion clear, but I guess I look for evidence and sources, and if that supports the author’s position, great. That does occur here, but other times we’re just kinda told “this guy was a bad politician” with scant evidence, or we’re given opinions about people who just don’t matter much. I don’t really need to know how the author interprets the character of every conquered king, sometimes it’s enough to know the empire was weak and the Mongols took advantage. So.. honestly a frustrating read because there’s a lot of interesting stuff, sooo much info, but I wish it were edited like 5% more or somethin and just clarified a bit. Still, if you’re a history buff this is a fantastic overview of a lot of material. Would recommend, but only to those with patience who are really interested in history.
Another giant book, since McLynn rounds out what can be pieced together from the Secret History and outside accounts of the Mongols with fuller discussions of Mongol life--much of it reinforced by *anthropological* studies of still-nomadic Mongol herdspeople. The ecology of Mongol steppe maintenance and wildlife control, logistical abilities, family dynamics and economic arrangements, as he argues, turn out to be significant in understanding why the Mongols were able to shift so quickly--and so effectively--into governing a massive empire. McLynn gives credit to the women of the Khan's family, as well as those he was smart enough to promote or marry into his family, and offers a compelling narrative of the spectacular rise of one of the most influential and complex figures in world history (and always one of my favorite lecture subjects for POL 150).
Not a bad read for someone with a passing interest who will probably never read anything else about the Mongols and Genghis Khan.
A lot of other reviews mention the shortcomings, and many of them are valid, but to get the exact angle you want or every aspect you’d need to read several different authors. I fully disagree the author wasn’t transparent about the competing perspectives on most points of contention and treated the subject very fairly. The author had a better eye for nuance than most and did not give in too much to sensationalism.
I do agree it was a slog at times. The author even seems to betray his original theme of avoiding “one damned battle after another” with pages and pages of this city surrendered and was slaughtered or this city held out for two weeks and on and on. We could have done without a lot of that and pursued richer material, which the author seems to have wanted to on several points but for some reason held back from. I really liked his asides and contextual framing even though some went on too long and didn’t seem very relevant (my favorite kind of relevancy, sometimes) or, worse, ended too soon with huge questions unanswered. That’s fine, just new avenues of interest opened and more books to add to the ever growing backlog.
My biggest gripe is the authors interest seems to wax and wane throughout the project. The result is a bit of inconsistency, great energy and promise at the onset, the long slog of rote information, and then a rush to the finish. Who he chose to focus on times seemed like it was motivated out of some personal interest or maybe just the sources were better. It would have been worth more to his initial stated goal to cut content and touch more on how the empire fell apart, who filled the vacuum, and how that played out to the modern day. Instead we just leave it as there were four major khanates therefore the story was over for the mongols. One of those Khanates ruled China and the other was literally called the Golden Horde, so we had more to talk about, I think.
To top off the complement sandwich, the author did a great job talking about the cultural, social, and political aspects that made this episode in history seem almost inevitable. I came to this book trying to understand how a bunch of pastoralists conquered China and half the rest of the world and who the man that took the reins on this was. It really was just the exact right (and phenomenally lucky) person at the exact right place and exact right time. The end result was what we got, a short lived and seemingly random episode that will forever have altered all of human history.
Long story short, I learned a ton but wish I’d skipped some pages.
A lot of other reviews mention the shortcomings, and many of them are valid, but to get the exact angle you want or every aspect you’d need to read several different authors. I fully disagree the author wasn’t transparent about the competing perspectives on most points of contention and treated the subject very fairly. The author had a better eye for nuance than most and did not give in too much to sensationalism.
I do agree it was a slog at times. The author even seems to betray his original theme of avoiding “one damned battle after another” with pages and pages of this city surrendered and was slaughtered or this city held out for two weeks and on and on. We could have done without a lot of that and pursued richer material, which the author seems to have wanted to on several points but for some reason held back from. I really liked his asides and contextual framing even though some went on too long and didn’t seem very relevant (my favorite kind of relevancy, sometimes) or, worse, ended too soon with huge questions unanswered. That’s fine, just new avenues of interest opened and more books to add to the ever growing backlog.
My biggest gripe is the authors interest seems to wax and wane throughout the project. The result is a bit of inconsistency, great energy and promise at the onset, the long slog of rote information, and then a rush to the finish. Who he chose to focus on times seemed like it was motivated out of some personal interest or maybe just the sources were better. It would have been worth more to his initial stated goal to cut content and touch more on how the empire fell apart, who filled the vacuum, and how that played out to the modern day. Instead we just leave it as there were four major khanates therefore the story was over for the mongols. One of those Khanates ruled China and the other was literally called the Golden Horde, so we had more to talk about, I think.
To top off the complement sandwich, the author did a great job talking about the cultural, social, and political aspects that made this episode in history seem almost inevitable. I came to this book trying to understand how a bunch of pastoralists conquered China and half the rest of the world and who the man that took the reins on this was. It really was just the exact right (and phenomenally lucky) person at the exact right place and exact right time. The end result was what we got, a short lived and seemingly random episode that will forever have altered all of human history.
Long story short, I learned a ton but wish I’d skipped some pages.
adventurous
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced