Wayne Bartlett

While not written by an historian, this 'biography' of King Cnut, seems to be an authoritative account of a king whose life I was completely ignorant. Bartlett has given the reader a list of the sources he has used and there is a really useful index. I found it easy to read on the whole and certainly not an exercise in stoic determination.

However I didn't always find the family trees at the beginning of the book easy to follow and the maps were very general and therefore not especially useful. On the other hand the illustrations were excellent and complemented the text well.

One could wish that the author had used more commas or that his editor has inserted more - it would have made reading of some sentences much easier.… (mer)

I was looking for a book that had an intelligent discussion of the Crusades from the Islamic perspective and this worked pretty well. The author is clearly a fan of the Muslim side of the Crusades. He was mostly fair about his discussion of wrong doing on each side. Though when discussing when the first Islamic army conquered Jerusalem he praised them a bit much for being very tolerant and not slaughtering everyone like the slaughter that accompanied the Crusaders taking Jerusalem. He failed to mention that all the Jews were expelled from the city by the Muslims and that when they were allowed back in that both Christians and Jews were required to wear special adornments so everyone could tell they were unbelievers much like the Nazis forced the Jews to wear the yellow star of David. Secondly, the common practice was that a city that resisted was usually subject to slaughter. Cities that surrendered were usually spared this as they spared many lives of the attackers by surrendering. When the Crusaders took Jerusalem is was by force and there was no surrender. When the armies representing Islam took Jerusalem the first time and then the final time (as portrayed in the movie Kingdom of Heaven) the city surrendered each time.

The author could have been fairer in his representation of each side but overall this is what I was looking for and the author shows he has done his research and knows what he is talking about.… (mer)

Ogedei Khan sounds like my kind of guy. Convinced of the harms of alcohol, he vows to cut his consumption in half. He then orders the making of larger cups, and drinks the same amount from half the number of cups.

In seriousness, this is a great book. The problem with the Mongols as a subject is that it isn't a single one. When reading a biography of Attila, for example, or of Tamerlane, one can easily cover the entire subject matter in a single tome. But with the Mongols, each successive figure or event rightly could have it's own spot in the library. Each volume could be as follows:

1-2. Genghis Khan; his rise and conquests
3. Ogedei, the conquest of Russia and the invasions of Eastern Europe
4. Guyuk [Kuyuk] and the Batu-Mongke family coup
5. Hulegu and the forging of the Ilkhanate
6-7. Kublai; the civil war, the Song and the fringes of empire in Japan, Java, Burma and Vietnam
8. Eccentricities of the empire, such as Kaidu
(Optional) 9. Tamerlane

Here, Bartlett does a wonderful job of including each of these varied tales in one single volume. To be sure, each section is brief, but still highly informative, and with it's size, very readable. The book is divided into 13 chapters, each delving into a different aspect of Mongol history.

Part of my choice to read this book spawned from my desire to learn more about a few minor areas in Mongol history – namely the Hulegu-Berke War, the Nayan Rebellion, Kaidu's dissidence and Kublai's conflicts with Burma, Java and Vietnam. There are such texts available on these subjects, but are hard to come by (and often expensive; one book, “Qaidu and the Rise of the Independent Mongol State in Central Asia” by Michal Biran, costs in the ballpark of $160), so to get an albeit condensed history of these things in this book was exactly what I was looking for.

Salih, the emir of Mosul (modern Iraq), defied the Mongols at every turn. When finally he surrendered, he was stripped naked, sewn into a freshly skinned sheepskin, and as it rotted, so too did he decay. It took him a month to die. Jesus Christ!

2013 is going to be the year of the Mongol for me. This is the seventh non-fiction book I've read this year on the subject (if you count two on Tamerlane), and I have seven or eight more lined up to read after this. As such, I've discovered the divide between those that hype up the Mongol atrocities, and those that downplay them – essentially, pro- or anti-Genghis. While I recognize both the man's beneficence and his tendency towards unimaginable annihilation, I'm of the camp that focuses more on the evil. (Hitler loved dogs, but usually the first fact about him listed is the Holocaust.) Here, Bartlett is of the same outlook as myself (for example, discussing the advancements Kublai made for Chinese society, but also describing the horrific means of execution, such as the one above.) Nayan was rolled up in a carpet and trampled to death by Mongol horses. The governor of Otrar had molten silver poured in his eyes and his ears. The caliph of Baghdad was starved to death. Mongke's funeral procession allegedly killed 20,000 people en route to his secret grave. Batu, after obliterating Russia, threatened and invaded Hungary because the king was granting refuge to “his slaves.” What I appreciate most is an honest and unbiased account, and here Bartlett delivers. (One of my upcoming books is Jack Weatherford's.)

This is one of the better books out there, a complete analysis. I wasn't convinced a complete analysis on this subject (especially including Tamerlane) was possible, but here it is. This is an excellent reference, and an overall excellent book.… (mer)