The Silk Roads

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 -- William Dalrymple, Books of the Year * 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 titleIt is difficult, in a short review, to do justice to a book so ambitious, so detailed and so fascinating as this one -- Gerald DeGroot * The Times * The authors gift for vividness is reminiscent of Jan Morris, while his command of revealing facts or fancies is not far short of Gibbons -- Felipe Fernndez Armesto * 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 HitlerIt is a tribute to Frankopans 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 -- Justin Marozzi * 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 -- Dr Bettany Hughes * 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 -- Dan Jones * Evening Standard * Bold and ambitious * Tablet * Full of intriguing insights and fascinating details -- Anthony Sattin * 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) * Its the details that win it. Did you know that Attilas 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 Frankopans 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 -- Averil Cameron * 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 p

Peter Frankopan is Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, and Director the Centre for Byzantine Research at Oxford University. He took a First in History and was Schiff Scholar at Jesus College, Cambridge, before completing his doctorate at Oxford, where he was Senior Scholar at Corpus Christi College. He has lectured at leading universities all over the world, including Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, NYU, King's College London and the Institute of Historical Research. His revised translation of The Alexiad by Anna Komnene was published in 2009 and The First Crusade was published in 2012.