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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
The title is a bit of a misnomer, as this is less about Genghis Khan himself than it is about the empire he created. Indeed, the great khan is "offscreen" for a sizable proportion of the action, and the book barrels on for a few hundred pages even after he's passed. It's the history of the early Mongolian empire rather than a Genghis biography--and while those two things are very similar, they are not quite the same.
This is a big book and McLynn will reward you for reading it. The problem, as some others have said, is that a lot of it is just a dispassionate list of Mongol military movements: "Subedei marched to here on this day, then Jebe to there on that day, they sacked this town and the siege took seven days, then they decided not to sack the next town because..." and so on. This tends to happen more the farther we travel from Genghis. This is justified inasmuch as it illustrates what was the Mongols' real strength, logistics. Genghis's generals could teach UPS a thing or two above moving people and things across places in little time with minimal cost. Rather than superior technology, genius, or "ferocity" (the last one very much imagined, the first two very real), many of their victories really boiled down to, "The Mongols got to where they wanted first." Industrial organization is everything.
There's plenty more of value to it. There are meaningful insights to be had about both the contigency of history (by no means is it true that a Genghis-like figure "had" to unite the steppes) and about the brutality of the Middle Ages, and of the Mongols in particular. That's to say nothing of the analysis of Mongolian religion and economics, both worthwhile and revealing. You just have to drudge through a fair bit to get to it.
This is a big book and McLynn will reward you for reading it. The problem, as some others have said, is that a lot of it is just a dispassionate list of Mongol military movements: "Subedei marched to here on this day, then Jebe to there on that day, they sacked this town and the siege took seven days, then they decided not to sack the next town because..." and so on. This tends to happen more the farther we travel from Genghis. This is justified inasmuch as it illustrates what was the Mongols' real strength, logistics. Genghis's generals could teach UPS a thing or two above moving people and things across places in little time with minimal cost. Rather than superior technology, genius, or "ferocity" (the last one very much imagined, the first two very real), many of their victories really boiled down to, "The Mongols got to where they wanted first." Industrial organization is everything.
There's plenty more of value to it. There are meaningful insights to be had about both the contigency of history (by no means is it true that a Genghis-like figure "had" to unite the steppes) and about the brutality of the Middle Ages, and of the Mongols in particular. That's to say nothing of the analysis of Mongolian religion and economics, both worthwhile and revealing. You just have to drudge through a fair bit to get to it.
I normally don’t mind history books that are bit more complicated but this is just boring and worth my time
Not a bad biography of Genghis Khan, but a bit dry throughout.
Well-researched and comprehensive, but suffers from often repetitive writing and way too many typos.
adventurous
challenging
informative
medium-paced
To be fair to McLynn, he is treading already pioneered ground with Genghis Khan: The Man Who Conquered the World (big claim but hey! Hyperbole works). So necessarily, he attempts to maneuver away from the established precedent of maps and mind games to present a different Genghis Khan. What he ends up doing though is providing a saucy story of sorts interspersed with the occasional historic fact. So what good is his book then?
In my humble opinion, McLynn provides an intermediate level biography of Khan and the factors which led him to conquer the world (borrowing from the title-note, I did not mention 'entire') which does away with the cobweb latticed perfunctory histories of years past while also avoiding the grandiose child of destiny narrative foisted upon the world by 21st century historians.
Is this the most authentic/most relevant biography of Temujin? That would be too daring a claim to make given humanity is always upgrading. But to McLynn's credit, he provides a trailblazing history of sorts which disallows the reader from getting bored. So overall, much nuanced reconstruction of the past augmented with a thrilling rendition of Genghis as an everyday commander.
In my humble opinion, McLynn provides an intermediate level biography of Khan and the factors which led him to conquer the world (borrowing from the title-note, I did not mention 'entire') which does away with the cobweb latticed perfunctory histories of years past while also avoiding the grandiose child of destiny narrative foisted upon the world by 21st century historians.
Is this the most authentic/most relevant biography of Temujin? That would be too daring a claim to make given humanity is always upgrading. But to McLynn's credit, he provides a trailblazing history of sorts which disallows the reader from getting bored. So overall, much nuanced reconstruction of the past augmented with a thrilling rendition of Genghis as an everyday commander.
slow-paced
informative
slow-paced
How did the author manage to make such an interesting topic so mind numbingly boring??
So much time was wasted on minute details of movements of troops that could have been condensed, the author put massive quotations in French with no translation offered in most chapters (so who knows what all that meant), and the manner in which it was written was in turns patronising and lengthy obfuscating of events which could have been explained concisely. Also the constant references to "this researcher" or "a better author" are meaningless: the average reader (ie me) is hardly going to be able to extrapolate a specific individual from this, so just mention them by name! Another issue seems to be the author presents his own judgement and opinions as irrefutable fact in all but the last chapter (which has some small discussion of other interpretations)
Came back to reading this after a 2 year pause and let me assure you it had not improved one bit.
So much time was wasted on minute details of movements of troops that could have been condensed, the author put massive quotations in French with no translation offered in most chapters (so who knows what all that meant), and the manner in which it was written was in turns patronising and lengthy obfuscating of events which could have been explained concisely. Also the constant references to "this researcher" or "a better author" are meaningless: the average reader (ie me) is hardly going to be able to extrapolate a specific individual from this, so just mention them by name! Another issue seems to be the author presents his own judgement and opinions as irrefutable fact in all but the last chapter (which has some small discussion of other interpretations)
Came back to reading this after a 2 year pause and let me assure you it had not improved one bit.