Customer Reviews

The Travels of Marco Polo: Edited by Peter Harris (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics)

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"Few texts have aroused more controversy than the book of Marco Polo," notes the editor with good reason: the Asian tales that Marco Polo brought back to Renaissance Europe were absolutely unbelievable...except for the fact that most of them turn out to be provably true, especially in the context of this carefully crafted new edition.

Like many "Great Works" this is a famous title that most people (myself included) have heard of throughout their lives...but have never read. One lazy Sunday I drifted into watching a Marco Polo mini-series, which I thought was a rather silly, romanticized, sensationalized Hollywood treatment. It annoyed me, but I watched it to the end...and then ran to Amazon to find a book to get the facts.

Amazing news...the "sensationalized" mini-series barely scratched the surface of the astounding things Marco Polo reports in his actual book!

This new edition makes his fantastic voyage accessible, substantiating his discoveries with considerable new analysis. This is largely due to the contributions of Sino-linguist Editor, Peter Harris, whose unique ability to consult original Chinese texts brings a new level of understanding to this work (much as he does in his new translation of the 13th century work A Record of Cambodia: The Land and Its People, which relates to my field of study).

Back to the story itself, Polo was a merchant with the heart of an anthropologist. Accounts of terrain, natural resources, buildings and trade goods abound (and can be quite dry) but these are punctuated by his unusual observations of ethnicities, religions, social customs and royal intrigues.

Indeed, Marco Polo's home was less civilized than the society he witnessed in China, to the point that he often had no point of comparison. Yet, he conscientiously describes city planning, landscaping, shopping malls, hospitals, public welfare systems with job retraining, organized law enforcement, paper money, military technology and systems of management, homes with central coal heat, multi-lingual government agencies, fire departments, long distance messenger networks, paved roads, public and private parks, and much more.

And, perhaps explaining the book's centuries of commercial success, there are plenty of tales of cannibalism, polygamy, polyandry, cults of assassins, sexual behavior, dowry customs, human sacrifice, executions, funerary customs, prostitution, gambling, sport, magic ritual, strange beasts (rhinoceroses, elephants, leopards, crocodiles, serpents, the mythical Roc bird), etc.

One comes away from this book in awe of the high civilization that existed in China, and with great respect for this brave man who did an admirable job of capturing the infinite diversity of 13th century Asian life.

Read this account and share the adventures of his amazing journey!

Author: Marco Polo (with Rustichello da Pisa)
Title: Description of the World
Time: 1271-1295
Destination:
Venice to Beijing and back (alleged)
Length: around 23 years
Type: overland and by ship
Rating: 7/10
Slow but good.

A slow read. The 434 pages of my German edition are divided into 224 chapters, each dealing with a place or phenomenon. There is no storyline and no strict chronological order of events. Instead, MP tells the reader about the things that he has either seen or heard about, and which he finds noteworthy. Some parts consist of mere fable and hearsay, while others seem fairly correct and paint a vivid picture of the world at the time.

The famous ''' (Lugou or Marco-Polo bridge) is one of those examples: Even if MP possibly only recorded what other travelers had been telling him, and even though the structure itself has undergone substantial renovations over the last 8 centuries, still... the bridge that MP describes in chapter 58 is really there, and one can almost feel the stories flow along the ancient Silk Roads serveral hundred years ago.

That being said, the book is still a slow read: I struggled with the boring stuff, the place names and with the historical figures. Also, I felt a bit distant from MP himself, except for the parts where his humour shines through (like in chapter 106, when he tells us of an area where all young girls are promiscuous and says: "That is a fine country for young men from sixteen to twenty-four to go to!")

The historical moments and the humorous parts gain this book a favorable rating.

A slow but good read.

A very remarkable book written in the 13th century. Many secrets were reviled when Marc returned. And may interesting explanations of things like the origin of cinnamon.

Marco writes well enough of his travels and you feel that you are there. You can actually follow the trail if you have a map. He describes the flora and fauna of each region and describes the economics and industry of the region.

Example: "The women of the superior class are in like manner free from superfluous hairs; their skins are fare, and they are well formed."

It is interesting to see how little has changed from Marco Polo's 13th century and now.

History's Mysteries - The True Story of Marco Polo (A&E DVD Archives)