![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[books 2012] Historical Biography
Jan. 27th, 2012 03:25 pm6. Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Resurrection by John Man
This has bee lying around for ages after I found it in a charity shop, but it got moved up the queue after I watched the film Mongol (which, incidentally, is far more watchable than I expected).
The book is part biography and part travel writing. As popular biographies of medieval figures go it's not bad. Man does a decent job of explaining the Mongol world, and of bringing Genghis to life (as well as can be done with the paucity of sources). The travel parts are better, in which Man travels through China and Mongolia to find out what Genghis means to people in both countries today.
It's more interesting than I'm making it sound.
John Man has also written a biography of Attila the Hun, which I'll probably track down at some point.
This has bee lying around for ages after I found it in a charity shop, but it got moved up the queue after I watched the film Mongol (which, incidentally, is far more watchable than I expected).
The book is part biography and part travel writing. As popular biographies of medieval figures go it's not bad. Man does a decent job of explaining the Mongol world, and of bringing Genghis to life (as well as can be done with the paucity of sources). The travel parts are better, in which Man travels through China and Mongolia to find out what Genghis means to people in both countries today.
It's more interesting than I'm making it sound.
John Man has also written a biography of Attila the Hun, which I'll probably track down at some point.
