Peter Frankopan

Peter Frankopan is a British historian whose work has challenged Western-centric views of world history and placed Central Asia, the Middle East, and the networks connecting East and West at the centre of the story of civilisation. His books have reached a vast popular audience while reshaping how historians think about the global past. Born in 1971, Frankopan is of Croatian descent and was educated at Eton College and Worcester College, Oxford, where he studied History. He is a Professor of Global History at the University of Oxford and the Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015) was his breakthrough — a sweeping reinterpretation of world history that argued the region connecting Europe and Asia (the "silk roads") has always been the true centre of civilisation, not a peripheral backwater. The book was a massive international bestseller, translated into over thirty languages, and praised for its ambition, its accessibility, and its willingness to challenge familiar narratives. The New Silk Roads (2018) brought the story into the twenty-first century. The Earth Transformed: An Untold History (2023) examined how climate and the environment have shaped human history from the beginning, linking climate events to the rise and fall of empires, religions, and civilisations. Like The Silk Roads, it combined vast ambition with accessible, engaging writing. Frankopan's scholarship is characterised by its breadth — he moves confidently across centuries, continents, and disciplines — and by its determination to include the perspectives and contributions of cultures that Western history has traditionally marginalised. The audiobook editions of Frankopan's histories are compelling, with narration that conveys the scope and energy of his arguments. His books and audiobooks are essential for anyone who wants to understand world history from a genuinely global perspective.