The Silk Roads
A New History of the World
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4,0 • 2 notes
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- 16,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION - NOW WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION BY THE AUTHOR
The No. 1 Sunday Times and international bestseller | A Sunday Times Book of the Decade
'Many books have been written which claim to be "A New History of the World". This one fully deserves the title' The Times
First published in 2015 to unparalleled global acclaim, Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads has revolutionised long-held conceptions of history and empire. Radical, epic in scope and widely considered a seminal text in our understanding of the economic and political renaissance of the East, The Silk Roads is a masterpiece of historical research and political theory. In this anniversary edition, Frankopan demonstrates just how crucial The Silk Roads is to our appreciation of history and our comprehension of the future of our increasingly international world.
For centuries, fame and fortune were to be found in the West - in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the East which calls out to those in search of riches and adventure. Sweeping right across Central Asia and deep into China and India, a region that once took centre stage is again rising to dominate global politics, commerce and culture.
With a new introduction and conclusion by the author, this 10th anniversary edition reinforces the role of The Silk Roads at the zenith of the twenty-first century's geopolitical canon.
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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Upending the traditional narrative of Western enlightenment and world domination as the inevitable descendants of Greek and Roman intellectual ferment, Oxford historian Frankopan (The First Crusade) places the silk roads the long, remote Central Asian trading routes linking Europe and China at the center of human history. The silk roads served as conduits for goods and ideas as well as plagues and marauding armies, and their location at the nexus of Europe and Asia continues to drive world events today. Frankopan casts his net widely in this work of dizzying breadth and ambition. Casual readers may struggle to follow all the threads; those opening to any page will find fascinating insights that illuminate elusive connections across time and place. Frankopan's thoughts on Islam, for instance, begin with newly discovered "wisps of text" that are reshaping understanding of Muhammad's life and stretch across centuries to the modern luxuries of the "oil-soaked" Middle East. The Black Plague carried west by the Mongols devastated Europe and the Middle East, but "the plague turned out to be the catalyst for social and economic change that was so profound that far from marking the death of Europe, it served as its making." Frankopan approaches his craft with an acerbic wit, and his epochal perspective throws the foibles of the modern age into sharp relief.
