Kublai Khan

by John Man

Book Overview

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree

Kublai Khan lives on in the popular imagination thanks to these two lines of poetry by Coleridge. But the true story behind this legend is even more fantastic than the poem would have us believe. He inherited the second largest land empire in history from his grandfather, Genghis Khan. He promptly set about extending this into the biggest empire the world has ever seen, extending...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553817183
• ISBN13: 9780553817188
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Transworld Publishers
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.0" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Fantastic book

I'm almost finished this book in less than a week and I have enjoyed every page. It is a fascinating story and brilliantly written. Not knowing a thing about Kublai Khan it was very satisfying to learn about the completion of the Mongol conquests of Central Asia, the Middle East and China, with the final debacle in Japan. The book reads like an adventure novel with mind bogglingly vast distances and numbers of people involved. Learning about the history of many countries there is often reference to the Mongols, so to read about it from their perspective really fills out the picture. There are many vignettes which give a personal insight into the characters involved in these exploits and Man sometimes describes sites, such as the ruins of Xanadu, as they are today. I thoroughly recommend this wonderful book to any reader