Jack Weatherford

Jonathan Davis

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

rumbledethumps

For centuries, people saw Genghis Khan as merely a blood-thirsty conquerer. Perhaps the most important reason we have seen Genghis in this light is due to his own propaganda. “Terror, he realized, was best spread not by the acts of warriors, but by the pens of scribes and scholars.”

This book attempts to counter that image of the Khans and the Mongol Empire, and shows all the great things they did that lay the foundation for the modern world: religious tolerance, paper currency, a postal system, etc. 

The book was a little too “this happened then this happened then that happened” for me to really enjoy it, but the information it contained was fascinating.

A re-evaluation of Genghis Khan's rise to power examines the reforms the conqueror instituted throughout his empire and his uniting of East and West, which set the foundation for the nation-states and economic systems of the modern era.

Madison Aumua

Bouke van der Bijl

Nice book to listen to as background sound while doing other things. Good overview of how the mongols basically conquered everything they could reach, and in doing so imposed many values and societal structures that still survive to this day.

Yasser Yahia

A different perspective on how the Mongols/Moghuls/Tatars were and what they introduced to the human civilization. They are not just the killing/fighting/bloodsheding barbarians, but more beyond that!

Wynn Netherland

Weatherford provides an entertaining and informative look at the rise and impact of one of history's great military leaders that shatters much of our caricatured perceptions. By the end though it feels like the author has baptized Genghis Khan as a proto progressive who ushered in a new age of secular government and free trade, all the while downplaying the slaughter of his battlefield conquests.

Luke Kanies

My favorite book I read in 2013. Unfortunately written by a fanboi whose introduction immediately calls into question his scholarship, but provides a completely different perspective on Khan, the Mongols, and really, most of the world's civilization.

Genghis Khan was way more important than you think. He had the largest land empire ever, was pretty much the only conquerer who enforced freedom of religion, oppressed the lords rather than the serfs, and consolidated engineers, architects, and philosophers, rather than just stuff. His last descendent was dethroned in 1920.

Yeah, it's that different than you thought.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Reviews