Nomads

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What to expect

The remarkable story of how Nomads have fostered and refreshed civilisation throughout our history.

Moving across millennia, Nomads explores the transformative and often bloody relationship between settled and mobile societies. Often overlooked in history, the story of the umbilical connections between these two very different ways of living presents a radical new view of human civilisation. From the Neolithic revolution to the 21st century via the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the great nomadic empires of the Arabs and Mongols, the Mughals and the development of the Silk Road, nomads have been a perpetual counterbalance to the empires created by the power of human cities.

Exploring the evolutionary biology and psychology of restlessness that makes us human, Anthony Sattin's sweeping history charts the power of nomadism from before the Bible, to its decline in the present day. Connecting us to mythology and the records of antiquity, Nomads explains why we leave home, and why we like to return again. This is the history of civilisation as told through its outsiders.

(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critics Review

In a book of sensitivity and grace, Sattin does not just describe the nomadic way of life, but also evokes it . . . This is a book of beauty and beguiling rhythm that offers unsettling lessons about our present-day world of borders
The Times
Thoughtful, lyrical yet ambitiously panoramic . . . As fleet and light-footed as its subject, it takes us along a dizzying path, over many of the highest ridges of human history . . . An important, generous and beautifully-written book
William Dalrymple, author of 'The Anarchy'
A terrific storyteller
New York Times
A fabulous piece of evocative writing, mixing personal stories with an epic sweep of history, the unique insight of location and an intimate connection to the subject. I loved it
Jerry Brotton, author of 'A History of the World in Twelve Maps'
Anthony Sattin's Nomads spreads before us a sweeping panorama of nomadism
that resonates through the past and echoes poignantly even in the present
Colin Thubron, author of 'Shadow of the Silk Road'
I was riveted by the shifts to nomadic culture, Sapiens-like, and by the feeling of learning lightly worn and deftly transmitted. This is a major book
Roland Philipps, author of 'A Spy Named Orphan'
The saga of the lost mobile cultures and empires that have impacted global history . . . a spirited defence of freedom of conscience, freedom of movement and migration, a romantic tribute to independence and to free spirit, and to being in tune with the rhythms of nature
Marc David Baer, author of 'The Ottomans'
An incredible work combining brilliant scholarship with an epic, page-turning narrative . . . His landmark book
Nicholas Crane
Sweeping . . . Poetic . . . Sattin brings together a huge range of material with great elegance, making it not only readable but also vital
Literary Review
Exceptional . . . tender and beautifully written
Jason Goodwin, Country Life
Nomads is a kind of rhapsody on how this aspect of human nature has contributed as much, if not more, to civilization, than the tillers of the soil
Asian Review of Books
Nomads is a monumental work, exhaustively researched that sets out to explain nomadism, its importance, rise and decline over the centuries in the minutest detail
Irish Examiner
Not only readable but also vital
Literary Review
Triumphantly tells the story of another way of living . . . This is a book that does not labour in the fields but gallops full stretch towards the horizon
Spectator
A much-needed act of historical revisionism
Times Literary Supplement
An unashamedly impressionistic paean to nomadic life interwoven with travelogue and memoir
The Times

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