When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the "Riches of the East" by Stewart Gordon
193 pages
Published 2008
Read August 21
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
International travel narratives in the medieval world are one of my super-specific historical interests. The Silk Road-Indian Ocean trading sphere during that same time period is another. This book samples a bit of both; if it were longer and lingered in fuller detail, if it provided more historical context and went into long asides to flesh out the lands and cultures along the way, I would have no reason not to love it with all my heart. Alas, Gordon adopts a brisk tone and breezes through a mere nine narratives of travel, alluding to but otherwise ignoring tantalizing other narratives and documents I certainly would like to see explored. The nine stories are selected with an eye to a broad diversity of experiences and perspectives, which somewhat ameliorates the lack of depth. Overall this feels like a morsel when I wanted a feast.
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