The Silk Roads

Author Peter Frankopan
Narrator Mike Grady
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Run Time 1 day, 1 hour and 7 minutes
Format Audio
Genre European history, General and world history, History, History of ideas, Society and Social Sciences.

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What to expect

The No. 1 Sunday Times and international bestseller - a major reassessment of world history in light of the economic and political renaissance in the re-emerging east

For centuries, fame and fortune was 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 adventure and riches. The region stretching from eastern Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China and India, is taking centre stage in international politics, commerce and culture – and is shaping the modern world.

This region, the true centre of the earth, is obscure to many in the English-speaking world. Yet this is where civilization itself began, where the world’s great religions were born and took root. The Silk Roads were no exotic series of connections, but networks that linked continents and oceans together. Along them flowed ideas, goods, disease and death. This was where empires were won – and where they were lost. As a new era emerges, the patterns of exchange are mirroring those that have criss-crossed Asia for millennia. The Silk Roads are rising again.

A major reassessment of world history, The Silk Roads is an important account of the forces that have shaped the global economy and the political renaissance in the re-emerging east.

'Brilliant and fearlessly wide-ranging' - Guardian, Books of the Year

'Breathtaking and addictively readable' Daily Telegraph, History Book of the Year

'Dazzlingly good' Evening Standard

Critics Review

Brilliant and fearlessly wide-ranging … undaunted by the complexity of the material, and the scale of the subject he has taken on, Frankopan marches briskly through the centuries, disguising his erudition with an enviable lightness of touch, enlivening his narrative with a beautifully constructed web of anecdotes and insights, backed up by an impressively wide-ranging scholarly apparatus of footnotes drawing on works in multiple languages … This is history on a grand scale, with a sweep and ambition that is rare … a remarkable book on many levels, a proper historical epic of dazzling range and achievement
Guardian
Breathtaking and addictively readable – History Book of the Year
Daily Telegraph
Many books have been written which claim to be “A New History of the World”. This one fully deserves the title…It is difficult, in a short review, to do justice to a book so ambitious, so detailed and so fascinating as this one
The Times
The author’s gift for vividness is reminiscent of Jan Morris, while his command of revealing facts or fancies is not far short of Gibbon’s
Literary Review
A book that roves as widely as the geography it describes, encompassing worlds as far removed as those of Herodotus and Saddam Hussein, Hammurabi and Hitler…It is a tribute to Frankopan’s scholarship and mastery of sources in multiple languages that he is as sure-footed on the ancient world as he is on the medieval and modern
The Sunday Times
Splendid … tightly researched … invigorating and profound [with] enough storytelling to excite the reader and enough fresh scholarship to satisfy the intellect…charismatic and essential
Daily Telegraph
The Silk Roads, which covers several continents and many centuries, is based on astonishingly wide and deep reading and in all areas draws on the latest research…it is full of vivid and recondite details
Independent
This is, to put it mildly, an ambitious book…Frankopan writes with clarity and memorable detail
Economist
Timely … it deserves a place by the library fireplace
Country Life
Dazzlingly good … [Frankopan blends] deep scholarly skill with a real literary talent
Evening Standard
Bold and ambitious
Tablet
Full of intriguing insights and fascinating details
Observer
With extraordinary erudition and a vivid style, [Frankopan] takes us on a dazzling tour … from the rise of the first empires right through to the present
Open (Weekly)
It’s the details that win it. Did you know that Attila’s Huns wore coats made from mouse skin?
Sunday Express
[Frankopan] tells a good story … with great panache. [The Silk Roads] is full of enthralling anecdotal details … Frankopan’s research is impeccable. The Silk Roads is based on information from sources in well over a dozen languages. It has a sweeping canvas and covers more than 2,000 years of history …[an] exhilarating rollercoaster ride
New Delhi Business Standard
Hugely ambitious in its scope
China Today
A compelling narrative and is jam-packed with stories. It contains numerous snippets of information that shed new light on major world events
China Daily
Essential reading
MoneyWeek
A compelling political, economic and social history that is as much about how we will live as how we once did
World Travel Guide
Beautifully constructed, a terrific and exhilarating read and a new perspective on world history
History Today
An often exhilarating tour of 2,000 years of history … Frankopan upends the usual world-history narrative oriented around ancient Rome and Greece and the irrepressible rise of Europe … In The Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan has provided a bracing wake up call.
The National AE
As incongruous it may seem to call an intensely-researched 600-page tome with 100 pages of footnotes a romp, The Silk Roads is a fluent, page-turning gallop through the roughly 2500 years from ancient Persia and Alexander the Great to the present day … If one had to choose an up-to-date volume from which to glean an overview of world history, this might well be it
Asian Review of Books
As well-written, entertaining, disturbing and exciting as a detective story
Svenska Dagbladet
Frankopan handles his material deftly and has an eye for telling details…a clear theme is that globalisation is not a new phenomenon. This is essential reading
Prosper Magazine
A dazzling piece of historical writing
South China Morning Post
The most illuminating book of the year … A healthy antidote to Eurocentric accounts of history [and] an impressive, if depressing account of the disastrous Western interventions in Central Asia
Times Literary Supplement
A very well-written and wide-ranging study, founded on reading of staggering breadth and depth … Strikingly up to date. The author has used the most recent scholarship to impressive effect … And he is evidently constantly rethinking in the light of new scholarship … The book is full of fascinating insights … No one could read it without learning a great deal, or without having their conception of the course of history radically challenged
Times Literary Supplement
Frankopan casts his net widely in this work of dizzying breadth and ambition … Frankopan approaches his craft with an acerbic wit, and his epochal perspective throws the foibles of the modern age into sharp relief
Publisher's Weekly
This book lives up to its claim to be a new history of the world because of its geopolitical paradigm shift … He is a Herodotus of the twenty first century
Irish Left Review
Breathtaking … inverts received wisdom … superb history charts mankind’s flirtation with global disaster
New Zealand Herald
Enticing, sometimes enchanting … An exceptionally, eclectically, eccentrically wide range of subjects
Sydney Morning Herald
A thumping good read
Sunday Times, South Africa
Frankopan shows that even in ancient times trade and culture bound distant people togethers … A rare book that makes you question your assumptions about the world
Wall Street Journal
‘Superb … Peter Frankopan is an exceptional storyteller … The lands of the Silk Roads are of renewed importance, and Frankopan’s book will be indispensable to anyone who wants to make sense of this union of past and present
Dallas Morning News
Sumptuous, intriguing and surprising
The Week
‘Magisterial’
Times Literary Supplement

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