Author: John Man

Genre: History/Asian

ISBN: 0-5538-1498-2

The following review was contributed by: John Walsh & CLICK TO VIEW John Walsh's Reviews

Genghis Khan is a name that instills mingled emotions of awe, horror and fascination even eight hundred years after his death. Born into obscurity in a vast grassland people by nomadic hill tribes people, he rose to prominence first in his large family, then his tribe and then among his whole people, welding together a powerful army capable of conquering the world. Through a mixture of ruthlessness, shrewdness and loyalty, Genghis managed to create the largest contiguous land empire the world has ever seen. His armies conquered China, Korea, Central Asia, the habitable parts of Russia, Persia and most of the Middle East, Georgia and Eastern Europe. They made landings on Japan and Java and spread terror throughout the known world. On occasions, he left the corpses of those vanquished piled high to demonstrate the futility of resisting his might. Many of the nations he invaded never fully recovered and some, such as Iraq, have lower populations now than when he invaded all those centuries ago.

At the same time, the Mongol Empire brought a period of religious tolerance and enabled communications and the transmission of culture within its boundaries to an extent never previously witnessed. His conquests helped to demonstrate some of the benefits of globalisation with which we are becoming familiar these days.

Based on careful historical recreation of events, together with close consideration of what primary and secondary sources exist, John Man had managed the extraordinary feat of bringing Genghis to life as a man and placing his motivations and actions in a believable context. He neither exonerates nor praises unduly his many excesses and he pays attention to the lives and cultures of those who were annihilated. The methodology Man employs to write this book are also exemplary and worthy of study in themselves: he combines personal observation and interview with wide reading of background sources and, also, educates himself in seemingly arcane topics such as geocryology, genetics and the methods of identifying the meaning of disappeared languages such as that of the Tangut people of the Xi Xia. This is a wonderful book in many ways and thoroughly recommended to anyone with an interest in the past.