Silk Road: Monks, Warriors & Merchants on The Silk Road (Hardcover)

~ Luce Boulnois (Author), Wong How Man (Photographer, Translator), Amar Grover (Photographer), Adam Woolfitt (Photographer), Helen Loveday (Translator), Bradley Mayhew (Contributor), Angela Sheng (Contributor) "In the early summer of 54 or 53 BCsome 700 years after the foundation of RomeMarcus Licinius Crassus, consul-triumvirate of Rome and governor of Syria,..." (more)
Key Phrases: first emperor, mulberry seeds, silent barter, Central Asia, Marco Polo, Silk Road (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

..."Those who want to fuel their Silk Road reveries should read this seminal book by Luce Boulnois, a world-renowned authority on the history of the fabled trade route. Into this beautifully wrought work, spanning more than 10 centuries, Boulnois has poured a lifetime of prodigious, passionate scholarship... For today's aspiring wayfarers, the book includes an extensive list of museums around the world that house Silk Road artefacts, and basic travel information and advice." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description

To the modern reader, the Silk Road conjures up images of fabled cities and exotic lands, of long-gone empires and great conquerors. In this authoritative book, Luce Boulnois explores the encounter between East and West across the vast continental expanse that separates the Mediterranean world from the Chinese one. She unravels in a clear and compelling way the complex threads that make up the history of these great overland trade routes, which allowed the transmission across the world of ideas and beliefs, techniques and works of art, helping to shape the civilizations that flourished along the way. How did the Romans, following in the footsteps of the Greeks, discover these far-flung regions? What did the Chinese know of the European world? How did they manage to keep the secret of silk manufacture safe for centuries? Did Marco Polo really go to China, or was he just a clever impostor? But the importance of Central Asia is not just a thing of the past, and the author discusses its significance in the modern world in cultural and geopolitical terms, including the implications of the most recent events taking place there.
• Written by an internationally-renowned authority on the Silk Road who has spent a lifetime researching and writing on the subject
• The author's knowledge of both Russian and Chinese enables her to make use of sources previously unavailable to western readers
• Translated from the best-selling French edition. Previous editions have been best-sellers and are available in almost a dozen languages
• Listing of selected museums around the world where Silk Road treasures may best be seen
• 26 color photographs
• 15 easy-to-read maps

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Odyssey Publications; illustrated edition edition (February 16, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9622177204
• ISBN-13: 978-9622177208
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #504,429 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars how silk came west, April 12, 2006

By	Magalini Sabina "sabina" (Rome Italy) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Silk Road: Monks, Warriors & Merchants (Paperback)

This book is a fantastic cultural adventure and should be read by anyone interested in cross-cultural relationships. More than a topographical description of the silk road, it is a gallop though history explaining paths taken by silk to get to Europe. It starts in prehistoric china and ends with the Karakorum highway, synthetizing in twenty chapters the reasons for the often difficult diffusion of luxury products from the Far East. The author, that evidently knows well chinese history and mentality, takes us by hand into the ancient cinese political issues as to foreign commerce, the fundamental role played by Iranians, byzantines and arabs during the Middle Ages up to the wary reciprocal opening of European and Cinese worlds due to brave and curious travelers. So we meet princesses, monks and merchants and get to know their fascinanting stories. One point of force of the book is the meticulous and modern analysis of these travel tales, so we have a critical perspective of what has come down in history and makes up our cultural background. Marco Polo get's revisited and also less well known ancient and modern travelers are cited.
Boulnois loves silk (her detailed description of materials of the old world and how they were made is enlightening)and its history, so she brings us to her country, France, and to the evolution of the silk industry in the XIX and XX century. And this somehow closes the circle of the story of this precious tissue that reached its apogeum in the last century.
The book however is much more than this and carries a great amount of information. It could be described actually as a textbook on the history of silk. It is well written even if not too easy to read, and sometimes it is a little repetitive.
I enjoyed it very much and feel enriched by its reading.

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cross Cultural, January 9, 2007

By	C. A. Novotny (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Silk Road: Monks, Warriors & Merchants (Paperback)

This is the book I wish I had written. I have traveled in most of these countries and studied their history and culture. I was so thrilled to see the information pulled together and the follow-through to show the outcomes of movements and trade goods. Fascinating. Loved it!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good intentions but chaotic, April 27, 2009

By	E. Valussi "E. Valussi" (Chicago) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Silk Road: Monks, Warriors & Merchants (Paperback)

This book is interesting to the general reader but it is very hard to use in a classroom setting. There are many repetitions, too many different names for the students to remember and very little linear thinking. Sometime the author will loose herself in the lengthy description of a particular textile, or dye or mineral, and forget about the general line of thought that she was pursuing. Shea also often will put two or three topics that have little to do with each other in the same chapter. A wide-ranging and impressive knowledge of the subject but quite disappointing as a teaching tool.