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Customer Review
- Reviewed in Canada on March 16, 2016Recommended unreservedly for its stimulating content and the ease with which the author communicates this complex material.
Should be read by all like me who were brought up with an almost exclusively Western European and (a little) North American emphasis in their History lessons and reading. My own history education (at both school and university levels) virtually stopped at the Eastern borders of Germany and the Balkans - and that will be true of many who read this book, I think - I remember reading in my final year at school of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in the 16th century and thinking 'where the hell did they come from ?' ... well this book answers not only that question but much of the backstory which led to that and many other issues necessary to better understand our current world as Frankopan having started many centuries ago does not hesitate to bring us right up to date into the first years of the 21st century.
Informative, educative and also a really good enjoyable read.
The only reason to withhold the fifth star is the poor almost indecipherable maps ... and that is a real nuisance unless one is entirely au fait with the steppes of Southern Europe/Northern Asia and all of the **stans from the Balkans to the Pacific.
