The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

It has been suggested, for instance, that the Mahābhārata, the great early Sanskrit epic, owes a debt to the Iliad and to the Odyssey, with the theme of the abduction of Lady Sita by Rāvaa a direct echo of the elopement of Helen with Paris of Troy.

It is supposed to be Rāmāyana, not Mahābhārata. Mistakes like this, and that also in the first few pages made me skeptical about the quality of this book.

Beyond that, I found this book enlightening. Writing a history based on how businesses have been made (and related things like coercion and war) is a very refreshing read.

I loved this book and found it at times very difficult to put down. The middle section was a bit laborious but towards the end and our modern times I really enjoyed.

Peter gives a very consise history of the world from the early abrahamatic religions to 9/11 and how different people, culture, religions and raw resources have shaped the world we live in today and how we got here.

Well worth a read if you have a week or two and have an interest in our shared history.

It's great to understand history of the world from different perspectives. And that is exactly what this book is doing. Telling us the history and putting it in trade-spefic context. I wouldn't call it revolutionary, but a solid and enlightening read - definitely.

Didn't finish. I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Too much detail and not enough context to be able to discern meaningful patterns in the story.

The book was different from what I expected from the blurb and I found it not too convincing about how this part of the world is rising again.

But those are just the first and last chapters. Otherwise it's a great and very readable long history from the perspective of the “middle of the world”.

a wonderful history of a part of the world that i dont often learn about. thank you for educating me.

This new take on the history of the world has set my head spinning. What's that you say, Peter Frankopan? The Holocaust came about because...of what? Food shortages in Russia? What? And Germany wasn't the only burly aggressor in World War II? Huh? And the center of the world hasn't always been Europe? What?

If Peter Frankopan didn't have such sterling credentials, and if The Silk Roads hadn't been published by such an esteemed company as Knopf, I'd have set this book aside before I got very far into it. It's a revolutionary text, for me, and I must say that it has shifted all my thoughts of history on its axis, with the new equator squarely on the lands of the silk roads.