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BrokenTune's Reviews > Silk Roads
Silk Roads
by
by
1.5*
This book. It's been such a disappointment: Not only is the title an exercise in how to cram several misrepresentations in less than ten words, but the writing style left me rather unimpressed, too.
There is little that is new about the history contained in the book. It certainly is not a history of the world (Europe, perhaps, but the focus on the power struggles between Christianity and Islam, and later on the West v. the East, and the US against Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan does not make this a book about the history of world). It is even less a book about the Silk Roads.
If you picked this up in the hope of learning about the trade routes and the people who live or travel along them, you've picked the wrong book.
Sure there were a few interesting snippets of history in this, but the authors choice of not going into a lot of detail and preferring to follow up events with other events without providing a lot of deliberations about the possible connections or effects, does not make for inspiring reading. Unless, that is, we are talking about the inspiration to look for other books.
Maybe the premise of the book was a little too ambitious? Maybe some editor should have pointed out some of the gaps ... or at least that the title does not reflect the content of the book?
Whatever the cause of its failings, I was hoping for a thoughtful insight into the history of the Silk Roads, but all I got from the books was what read like the work of a self-congratulatory academic who couldn't make up his mind what to write about and looked at history mostly through Union-Jack-striped goggles.
This book. It's been such a disappointment: Not only is the title an exercise in how to cram several misrepresentations in less than ten words, but the writing style left me rather unimpressed, too.
There is little that is new about the history contained in the book. It certainly is not a history of the world (Europe, perhaps, but the focus on the power struggles between Christianity and Islam, and later on the West v. the East, and the US against Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan does not make this a book about the history of world). It is even less a book about the Silk Roads.
If you picked this up in the hope of learning about the trade routes and the people who live or travel along them, you've picked the wrong book.
Sure there were a few interesting snippets of history in this, but the authors choice of not going into a lot of detail and preferring to follow up events with other events without providing a lot of deliberations about the possible connections or effects, does not make for inspiring reading. Unless, that is, we are talking about the inspiration to look for other books.
Maybe the premise of the book was a little too ambitious? Maybe some editor should have pointed out some of the gaps ... or at least that the title does not reflect the content of the book?
Whatever the cause of its failings, I was hoping for a thoughtful insight into the history of the Silk Roads, but all I got from the books was what read like the work of a self-congratulatory academic who couldn't make up his mind what to write about and looked at history mostly through Union-Jack-striped goggles.
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Reading Progress
January 5, 2016
– Shelved
May 19, 2018
–
Started Reading
June 9, 2018
–
16.19%
"So, after 40-odd pages of dense and somewhat pointless writing about about religious squabbles in the Middle East, we have now arrived at a section that seems to talk about the trade routes. Finally.
This had better be a good section because I am very tempted to DNF this sucker of a book."
page
103
This had better be a good section because I am very tempted to DNF this sucker of a book."
June 9, 2018
–
25.0%
"The Crusades. Blah, blah, blah...
Why is this even in here?
Oh, I see, that's right, the author previously wrote a book about the Crusades."
page
159
Why is this even in here?
Oh, I see, that's right, the author previously wrote a book about the Crusades."
June 9, 2018
–
Finished Reading
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by
Preslava
(new)
Mar 12, 2019 09:10AM
I absolutely agree! I guess there is value if you know nothing about world history and need a crash course on it but I don't see much more than the written equivalent of an afternoon with the History channel documentaries.
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Preslava wrote: "I absolutely agree! I guess there is value if you know nothing about world history and need a crash course on it but I don't see much more than the written equivalent of an afternoon with the Histo..."Quite a disappointing book, wasn't it?
