Review: The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: A brief historical narrative on the empires and nations specifically from a trading perspective and hence the silk roads - not specifically the traditional Silk Route alone.

How the whole world is inter related and political decisions in one corner and one era ring true through the decades and centuries is what this book focuses on. From ancient trade routes and visits in Eurasia upto China to American policy in the Middle East - the book cuts across a lot of centuries and geo-political scenarios often correlating obtuse events through a subtle underlying thread. There is a very obvious Westerner's perspective to world history but interestingly does try to not whitewash imperial and colonialism related tragedies a large part of the world has had to face over the centuries a lot of it driven from Europe in the recent past.

The book tries to capture a lot of events through the years and does a decent job at tying that chronological order focused through the lens of primarily trade and commerce and the quest for making money as a trade off to demolishing cultures and civilizations.

I have a feeling I'll be wanting to redo this as there was a lot of information packed into this that makes for heavy reading. But to the perspective of how much data it has packed in, the author does a great job at ensuring it isn't completely dry.

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