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

Genghis Khan is one of history's immortals: a leader of genius, driven by an inspiring vision for peaceful world rule. Believing he was divinely protected, Genghis united warring clans to create a nation and then an empire that ran across much of Asia. Under his grandson, Kublai Khan, the vision evolved into a more complex religious ideology, justifying further expansion. Kublai doubled the empire's size until, in the late 13th century, he and the rest of Genghis’s ‘Golden Family’ controlled one fifth of the inhabited world. Along the way, he conquered all China, gave the nation the borders it has today, and then, finally, discovered the limits to growth. Genghis's dream of world rule turned out to be a fantasy. And yet, in terms of the sheer scale of the conquests, never has a vision and the character of one man had such an effect on the world. Charting the evolution of this vision, John Man provides a unique account of the Mongol Empire, from young Genghis to old Kublai, from a rejected teenager to the world’s most powerful emperor.

Spawning an empire ranging from Persia to China, Genghis Khan united a nomadic warrior culture that had lived with their agrarian neighbors through controlled and limited extortion. This accessible book provides an introduction to the history and culture of the Steppe people from which Genghis Khan emerged, and chronicles the events that led to his being named the Great Khan. Also included are sixteen biographical sketches, a wealth of annotated primary documents, five maps, an annotated timeline, a glossary, an annotated bibliography and several illustrations.

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

Genghis Khan was a warrior and ruler of genius who, in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, brought the nomadic tribes of Mongolia together under his rule and then turned his attention beyond his borders. This volume chronicles the history of the ancient people of the steppes, the rise of Genghis Khan and reforms under his rule, his conquests in northern China and Western Asia, and the history of the Mongol people after Genghis Khan.

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.

The first new history of the Mongol Empire for over twenty years.