A review by katreads2022
The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World by Peter Frankopan

medium-paced

2.5

Shockingly poorly-written and rushed, “The New Silk Roads” fails to live up to the insightfulness of its excellent predecessor. Frankopan clearly is better suited to writing history rather than recounting recent events: unfortunately, developments in Central Asia from 2015 to 2018 make up the bulk of the book with little more analysis than a simple news recap. If you’re looking for a summary piece on the rise of the East during precisely these years, there is perhaps no better resource. I say those years because “The New Silk Roads” has aged astonishingly in just a little more than three years. Some of the tidbits of info are simply irrelevant due to the chaos of recent years. This outdatedness isn’t Frankopan’s fault; however, for a book which attempts to glean some insight into the future of shifting global powers it loses most of its appeal. At times it feels like barely-significant events are shoved in to fit into a hardly fleshed-out narrative.