Genghis Khan Book Review

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Paiton Ingram Dr. Cynthia Bisson HIS 1010 4/11/12 Genghis Khan: Book Review Genghis Khan and the making of the modern World, by Jack Weatherford is a novel that changed my perspective on Khan. Weatherford does a wonderful job of including details of his travels to Mongolia and of Khan’s life. Through geographic details and the true history of Khan’s life, readers can see every emotion that drove his seemingly cruel actions, and begin to see that he was a great leader and man. Jack Weatherford, author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, is the Dewitt Wallace Professor of Anthropology at Macalester College. He never intended to write a book on the life of Genghis Khan, but wanted to study the “role of tribal people in the history of world commerce and the Silk Route connecting China, the Middle East, and Europe” (XXX). During his travel he reached Mongolia and ended up staying there for five years, because he discovered that Mongolians were not what the world had made them out to be. He wrote this book to reveal Genghis Khan’s true impact on world history. After Khan’s death, his burial site and a large area surrounding it, was closed off and entrance forbidden. This has caused many to make up a false persona of who Genghis Khan was. He was a great ruler who was respected by loyal subjects and followers, and who does not deserve disapproval from ignorant people. There are some notable personal and political events in the Great Khan’s life, which impacted his decision to unify the Mongol people. He grew up in tribal violence, murder, abandonment and fear, which helped shape his character and also gave him a strong survival instinct. “Hunting, trading, herding, and fighting formed a seamless web of subsistence activities in the lives of the early Mongols” (17). He learned early in childhood how important alliances were to the survival of his

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