NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The startling true history of how one extraordinary man from a remote corner of the world created an empire that led the world into the modern age—by the author featured in Echoes of the Empire: Beyond Genghis Khan. The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans did in four hundred. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege. From the story of his rise through the tribal culture to the explosion of civilization that the Mongol Empire unleashed, this brilliant work of revisionist history is nothing less than the epic story of how the modern world was made.

Accessible scholarly treatment of Mongol history for the wider public, offering a comprehensive view from pre-historic times to the modern age.

Genghis Khan was the founder of the Mongol Empire, the largest continuous land empire ever. On his death in 1227, this extended from the Near East to the Yellow Sea, and was expanded by his successors to include what is now Iran, Iraq and southern Russia. By 1206, Genghis Khan had completed the unification by conquest of all the tribes of Mongolia, and was acclaimed as universal Khan. He then launched his assault on Northern China. Peking was captured in 1215, and the Chin were finally subjugated by Genghis's successors in 1234. This is the definitive biography.

A landmark biography by the New York Times bestselling author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World that reveals how Genghis harnessed the power of religion to rule the largest empire the world has ever known. Throughout history the world's greatest conquerors have made their mark not just on the battlefield, but in the societies they have transformed. Genghis Khan conquered by arms and bravery, but he ruled by commerce and religion. He created the world's greatest trading network and drastically lowered taxes for merchants, but he knew that if his empire was going to last, he would need something stronger and more binding than trade. He needed religion. And so, unlike the Christian, Taoist and Muslim conquerors who came before him, he gave his subjects freedom of religion. Genghis lived in the 13th century, but he struggled with many of the same problems we face today: How should one balance religious freedom with the need to reign in fanatics? Can one compel rival religions - driven by deep seated hatred--to live together in peace? A celebrated anthropologist whose bestselling Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World radically transformed our understanding of the Mongols and their legacy, Jack Weatherford has spent eighteen years exploring areas of Mongolia closed until the fall of the Soviet Union and researching The Secret History of the Mongols, an astonishing document written in code that was only recently discovered. He pored through archives and found groundbreaking evidence of Genghis's influence on the founding fathers and his essential impact on Thomas Jefferson. Genghis Khan and the Quest for God is a masterpiece of erudition and insight, his most personal and resonant work.

Komaroff (curator of Islamic Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and Carboni (curator of Islamic Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art) produced this fine catalog to accompany a major show of Ilkhanid (as the Mongol dynasty was called after conversion to Islam) art exhibited at the authors' museums in New York and Los Angeles in 2002-2003. Most of the manuscripts, metalwork, textiles, ceramics, and other finely decorated objects were created in Iran. Many objects are also included from the Yuan Dynasty in China, during which the Mongols ruled. Eight full-length essays are built around the objects of the exhibition and other works, all depicted in color. The essays describe the history, culture, courtly life, artistic exchanges, religious art, arts of the book, and creation of a new visual language. Distributed by Yale U. Press. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Mongol leader Genghis Khan was by far the greatest conqueror the world has ever known. His empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to central Europe, including all of China, the Middle East, and Russia. So how did an illiterate nomad rise to such colossal power and subdue most of the known world, eclipsing Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon? Credited by some with paving the way for the Renaissance, condemned by others for being the most heinous murderer in history, who was Genghis Khan? His actual name was Temujin, and the story of his success is that of the Mongol people: a loose collection of fractious tribes who tended livestock, considered bathing taboo, and possessed an unparalleled genius for horseback warfare. United under Genghis, a strategist of astonishing cunning and versatility, they could dominate any sedentary society they chose. Combining fast-paced accounts of battles with rich cultural background and the latest scholarship, Frank McLynn brings vividly to life the strange world of the Mongols, describes Temujin's rise from boyhood outcast to becoming Genghis Khan, and provides the most accurate and absorbing account yet of one of the most powerful men ever to have lived.

As a twenty-three-year-old student in mid-1930s, pre-World War II China, John DeFrancis did not set out to make a thousand-mile camel trek across the Gobi Desert, become the prisoner of a Muslim warlord, or travel twelve hundred miles down the bandit-infested Yellow River on an inflated sheepskin raft. But these were just some of the adventures experienced by the author and his traveling companion when they tried to retrace the footsteps of Genghis Khan and ended up dodging the fighting between the Communists nearing the end of their Long March and a coalition of forces under Chiang Kai-shek's Central Government and a cabal of Muslim warlords. Informed by an extensive knowledge of Chinese history and punctuated with keen observation and gentle humor, the narrative is a personal history that can be read both as a tale of high adventure in the wild west of China and as prelude to the present in that tortured land. Westerners can no longer trace the footsteps of Genghis Khan. Many areas of China that challenged the adventuresome were declared off-limits more than a half-century ago - and the Gobi Desert and sensitive border regions are still inaccessible.