The Silk Roads

The axis of history writing seemed to shift east with Frankopan's sweeping history, which placed the Silk Road at the very centre of world events
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
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
My book of the year: history on a grand scale, with a sweep of ambition that is rare . . . A remarkable book on many levels, and one that anyone would have been proud to write: a proper historical epic of dazzling range, ambition and achievement
The most illuminating book of the year . . . A healthy antidote to Eurocentric accounts of history
Splendid . . . tightly researched . . . invigorating and profound with enough storytelling to excite the reader and enough fresh scholarship to satisfy the intellect . . . charismatic and essential
A rare book that makes you question your assumptions about the world
Dazzlingly good
Based on astonishingly wide and deep reading and in all areas draws on the latest research . . . It is full of vivid and recondite details
Full of intriguing insights and fascinating details
With extraordinary erudition and a vivid style, he takes us on a dazzling tour of these parts from the rise of the first empires right through to the present
Beautifully constructed, a terrific and exhilarating read and a new perspective on world history
As well-written, entertaining, disturbing and exciting as a detective story
A dazzling piece of historical writing
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
Monumental . . . prodigious . . . astonishing. Frankopan is an exhilarating companion for the journey along the routes which conveyed silk, slaves, ideas, religion, and disease, and around which today may hang the destiny of the world
An exceptional storyteller . . . Frankopan does a superb job of explaining the history that has led to this modern era of new Silk Roads running across "the spine of Asia." . . . Frankopan's book will be indispensable to anyone who wants to make sense of this union of past and present
Sumptuous, intriguing and surprising
A big book like this would have taken the whole year to read if I had followed up every reference that piqued my interest
Sumptuous, intriguing and surprising

The break out history release of the year, selling over 20,000 copies TCM

PETER FRANKOPAN is a historian based at Oxford University. He is the author of The First Crusade: The Call from the East, a major monograph about Byzantium, Islam and the West in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He is a senior research fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, and the director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research at Oxford University. His revised translation of The Alexiad was published in the United States in 2009.