Books Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World Download Free

Describe Regarding Books Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Title	:	Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Author	:	Jack Weatherford
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 312 pages
Published	:	March 22nd 2005 by Broadway Books (first published March 16th 2004)
Categories	:	History. Nonfiction. Biography. Cultural. Asia. Historical. Audiobook. World History

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Jack Weatherford

Paperback | Pages: 312 pages

Rating: 4.04 | 43937 Users | 2597 Reviews

Representaion Toward Books Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Genghis Khan and his Mongol Horde were good news for the world. Really. Not convinced? Consider the following: 1. Genghis Khan was an advocate of human rights, specifically freedom of religion, freedom from torture and free trade (he got two of the Four Freedoms right, which is pretty impressive by medieval standards, especially when they still, like, burned heretics and unbelievers in Europe and elsewhere). GK forbade the use of torture in trials and as punishment. He also granted religious freedom within his realm, though he demanded total loyalty from conquered subjects of all religions. His own immediate family was religiously diverse: besides those who were Shamanists or Buddhists, a significant number were Monophysite Christians --- and later also Muslim converts. As for the free trade thing, it was more of a byproduct of the commercial opportunities that developed along the Silk Road (“history’s largest free-trade zone”), once the interior of the Eurasian landmass became safe enough to travel under the Pax Mongolica. Free trade as human right is still a pretty iffy concept, anyway. 2. GK created a hitherto unprecedented egalitarian society where men and some women (more on this later) advanced through “individual merit, loyalty and achievement”, instead through birth and aristocratic privilege. This egalitarian society was also incredibly diverse, comprising of people of different religions and nations. The Mongols hired European artisans to decorate their HQ in Xanadu, Chinese engineers to man their siege engines, and Muslim astronomers to chart their horoscopes. And they might have hired an Italian guy called Marco Polo to govern the city of Hangzhou --- who knows? But there’s no independent proof of it whatsoever. 3. GK was a proto-feminist --- well, he was sort of pro-woman, in the context of his era. He made it law that women are not to be kidnapped, sold or traded. Through marital alliances, he installed his daughters as de facto rulers over conquered nations. In Mongol culture, when the men went off to war, the women ruled the roost. And since Mongol men in the time of GK went really far away to conquer distant nations and did not return for years, the wives and daughters were the real boss at home (and also at the various Mongol courts, when many of GK’s male descendants turned out to be drunken incompetents). A successful queen like Sorkhothani, the wife of GK’s youngest son, was able to rule in her dead husband’s stead and made all of her sons Great Khans. Failure, however, could doom such women into cruel and unusual punishments, such as being sewed up naked into a rug and then pummeled to death (Mongols abhorred the sight of blood, thus the rug). 4. The Mongols promoted pragmatic, non-dogmatic intellectual development in the countries that they ruled. Although himself an illiterate, GK and his family recognized the value of learning and actively encouraged the development of the sciences. Under the Mongols, learned men did not have to “worry whether their astronomy agreed with the precepts of the Bible, that their standards of writing followed the classical principles taught by the mandarins of China, or that Muslim imams disapproved of their printing and painting.” New technology, such as paper and printing, gunpowder and the compass were transmitted through the Mongol realm to the West and sparked the Renaissance a few generations later. 5. The Mongols were for low taxes. GK lowered taxes for everyone, and abolished them altogether for professionals such as doctors, teachers and priests, and educational institutions. 6. The Mongols established a regular census and created the first international postal system. 7. The Mongols invented paper money (it was soon abandoned because of hyper-inflation, but they got the right idea) and elevated the status of merchants ahead of all religions and professions, second only to government officials (this is in contrast to Confucian culture, which ranked merchants as merely a step above robbers). They also widely distributed loot acquired in combat and thus promoted healthy commercial circulation of goods. 8. The Mongols improved agriculture by encouraging farmers to adopt more efficient planting methods and tools, as well as transplanting different varieties of edible plants from country to country and developed new varieties and hybrids. Okay. So Pax Mongolica was basically good for the world. But wait, how about all of those terrible massacres, rapine and wholesale destruction of cities? Didn’t Genghis Khan famously stated that “the greatest joy a man can know is to conquer his enemies and drive them before him. To ride their horses and take away their possessions. To see the faces of those who were dear to them bedewed with tears, and to clasp their wives and daughters in his arms?” Actually, Muslim chroniclers attributed that quote to him and it is highly unlikely that he ever uttered it. Muslims writers of the era often exaggerated Mongol atrocities for Jihad purposes.* The Mongols were very aware of the value of propaganda as a weapon of war and actively encouraged scary stories about themselves.The Mongols decimated cities that resisted them, such as Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, but they generally let those that surrendered remain unmolested. At the end of the fourteenth century, Tamerlane piled up pyramids of heads outside the cities that he conquered, and as he (flimsily) claimed to be a Mongol, “his practices were anachronistically assigned back to Genghis Khan.” Three centuries later, Voltaire adopted a Mongol dynasty play to fit his own personal political and social agenda by portraying GK, whom he used as a substitute for the French king, as an ignorant and cruel villain. So basically, GK got an undeservedly bad rap. Yay for Genghis Khan! * “…more conservative scholars place the number of dead from Genghis Khan’s invasion of central Asia at 15 million within five years. Even this more modest total, however, would require that each Mongol kill more than a hundred people; the inflated tallies for other cities required a slaughter of 350 people by every Mongol soldier. Had so many people lived in the cities of central Asia at the time, they could have easily overwhelmed the invading Mongols. Although accepted as fact and repeated through the generations, the (inflated) numbers have no basis in reality.”

Specify Books As Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Original Title:	Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
ISBN:	0609809644 (ISBN13: 9780609809648)
Edition Language:	English
Characters:	Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan, Subutai, Ögedei Khan, Chagatai Khan, Tolui Khan, Batu Khan, Sorghaghtani Beki
Setting:	Mongol Empire
Literary Awards:	Minnesota Book Award for History & Biography (2005)

Rating Regarding Books Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Ratings: 4.04 From 43937 Users | 2597 Reviews

Criticism Regarding Books Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

This is the fun of books: I didn't have any specific, overweening desire to learn about Genghis Khan, but saw this available in an Audible 2-for-1 deal and thought, "Sure! I could stand to know more about him." 14 hours, 20 minutes later and I'm really glad I did: Genghis Khan had an out-sized influence on the modern world, and a surprising amount of information is (an is not) known about him. Jack Weatherford has done an admirable job of assembling it in one place. It was fascinating to learn

A staggering and insightful cultural retrospective that brings to life vivid scenes from Khans time. The narrative weaves around the globe and through time to link with many things, phrases, objects, clothing of which I was familiar, but had until now, no real logistical links back to their origins.So, now that I know on whom to blame the invention of pants, Ill overlook this massive grudge Im still nurturing, and love Khan as much as the Mongolians. So much of historical figures are

Weatherford relates the remarkable story of Genghis Khan as told in The Secret History of the Mongols. Born in 1162, Genghis Khan grew up an uneducated outcast on the Asian steppes. He learned through harsh experience to be an astute judge of people, to be self-reliant and to be completely ruthless. He set his own traditions. He valued loyalty first followed by competence. Lineage and social standing did not matter. He was a great organizer and quick study, taking the best ideas from each

This was a very depressing book. It confirms my belief that for people morality is less important than if someone is on your "team." For Weatherford, Genghis Khan is team globalization, so the book is really a long-form apologia for mass murder and conquest.Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is based on two pillars. One is the idea that the Mongols created the modern ethos of free trade, one world government, religious toleration, feminism (sort of), and learning. The other is that

This gets two stars instead of one because it's very well written. Factually, however, it's abysmal.If you want a light, easy and entertaining read, you won't be disappointed. If you'd like to learn about Mongolian history however, I can only urge you not to read this book. A better bet would be the eminently more reliable, but still readable The Mongols by David Morgan.It suffers from many of the faults common to revisionist history - starting out with a good point but over-exaggerating to

This was a really incredible book for a lot of reasons, and it's going to take me a little bit of time to unpack it. First and foremost, the book successfully overthrew everything I thought I knew about those rampaging Mongol hordes. Now, you think you know how this is going to go: a historical figure we used to think was a hero becomes a villain or (in this case) vice versa. But it's not that simple. The book in no way glorifies Genghis. But it convinced me that we have his legacy all wrong.

This is a book that can and should be read by everyone, at least all with the slightest interest in world history. I feel this so adamantly since what it tells us does away with serious misconceptions about the Mongol Empire. It explains in a clear and comprehensible manner how the world we live in today has been improved by Mongol practices. It is stated that the book is revisionary, but I believe wholeheartedly in what we are told. It is clear and thoroughly documented. What we are told just