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Empires of the Silk Road

A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present

By Christopher I. Beckwith

(3)

| Others | 9780691150345

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Book Description

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive account of the history of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the present.

Critics

Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present

Beckwith is a historian of the old school, trained in philology and careful analysis of sources; he is also rather biased, entirely unsystematic, and idiosyncratic in the extreme. Empires of the Silk Road is gloriously erudite and digressive, offerin ... (read full critics)

dannyreviews published on Tue, 23 Aug 2011

1 Review

This book describes the political history of Central Asia from the start of the Caucasian diaspora about 4 millenia ago in just 300 pages. Such a book can only be very concise. Unfortunately however, what we get is a bewildering list of political leaders and their empires from Ireland to Japan. Key ... (continue)

This book describes the political history of Central Asia from the start of the Caucasian diaspora about 4 millenia ago in just 300 pages. Such a book can only be very concise. Unfortunately however, what we get is a bewildering list of political leaders and their empires from Ireland to Japan. Key people like Attila and Chinggis Khan are covered in just a few pages. Little attention is given to other aspects that made Central Asia to what it was, e.g. the impact of geography, as does Peter Perdue in “China Marches West”. Also, relatively little attention is paid to the cultural exchange that took place and that was so important for the development of European and East-Asian culture.
Curiously the book ends with a two chapter rant against Modernism. The author considers Modernism the root of all modern evil in Central Asia. As a result we learn more about his dislike of Picasso than about the Persian poet Hafiz that he admires.
I find it disappointing to give this book only two stars. Mr. Beckwith is a man of great learning and of great passion for his subject. With better editing a much better book could have been produced.

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Hermes said on Jul 3, 2009 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback