Genghis Khan - Hardcover

The creator of the greatest empire the world has ever seen is one of history's immortals. In Central Asia, they still use his name to frighten children. In China, he is honoured as the founder of a dynasty, the Yuan. In Mongolia he is the father of the nation. In the USA, Time magazine in, voted Genghis Khan 'the most important person of the last millennium'. But how much do we really know about this man? How is it that an unlettered, unsophisticated warrior-nomad came to have such a profound effect on world politics that his influence can still be felt some 800 years later? He was born, named Temujin, around the year 1162 on the slopes of the now sacred mountain Burkhan Kaldun in Outer Mongolia. His childhood, viewed through the distorted, mythologizing lens of contemporary oral histories, includes all the usual tribulations of youth as well as a few less common ones - such as killing his brother at the age of thirteen in an argument over a dead bird. The man who emerged was a ruthless, brilliant tactician with a profound grasp of realpolitik, but one eye fixed firmly on his destiny...

John Man is a historian and travelwriter with a special interest in Mongolia. After reading German and French at Oxford he did two postgraduate courses, one in the history of science at Oxford , the other in Mongolian at the School of Oriental and African Studies. His GOBI: TRACKING THE DESERT (Weidenfeld, 1997) was the first book on the subject in English since the 1920s. He is also the author of THE ATLAS OF THE YEAR 1000, (Penguin 1999), ALPHA BETA (Headline, 2000) on the roots of the Roman alphabet and THE GUTENBERG REVOLUTION (Headline 2002) on the origins and impact of printing.