Customer Reviews

Silk Road

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jonathan Tucker offers us not only a history and an art and architecture book, he provides us a feeling for the merchants and scholars who traveled east and west across the expanse of Asia for profit, for knowledge, and for adventure. The hundreds of fine colored photographs, the many interspersed maps, and quotations from poetry and contemporary travelers aid our armchair journeys across time and cultures. Arranged much like a guidebook, the author starts in Xian, China, and takes us westward along the various land routes of the Silk Road, with southern spurs to Afghanistan and India as well as northern routes to the Aral and Caspian areas. Although the various wars of empire over the past 2,000 years tend to merge and blur by the time the reader approaches the end, we do manage to appreciate the influences of art, technology, and design of one people upon another. We see how empire-building and its associates bloodshed and city destruction had a strong economic basis, and the encouragement of trade and protection of caravans from brigands were key responsibilities of kings and khans.

The Art Media Resources edition I own has a number of typographical errors, chiefly hard hyphens and spaces that were not removed in digital production. The style is dry and direct but easy to follow.

Readers of all the other historical books on the Silk Road that focus on music, religion, and military matters, as well as modern tourists seeking the unusual, will find this large book a perfectly worthy supplement. And if you have no such interest in Silk Road studies but are curious, then by all means begin here.