Download Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, by Laurence Bergreen
Knowing the way the best ways to get this book Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen is likewise important. You have remained in ideal website to start getting this information. Get the Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen web link that we give here and check out the link. You can order the book Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen or get it as quickly as possible. You could swiftly download this Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen after obtaining deal. So, when you need the book swiftly, you can directly get it. It's so easy therefore fats, right? You must like to in this manner.
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, by Laurence Bergreen
Download Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, by Laurence Bergreen
Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen. Welcome to the best web site that available hundreds sort of book collections. Right here, we will certainly provide all books Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen that you require. The books from famous writers and also authors are offered. So, you could appreciate now to get one by one sort of book Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen that you will certainly look. Well, pertaining to the book that you really want, is this Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen your option?
Maintain your method to be below and read this page completed. You can take pleasure in looking the book Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen that you really describe obtain. Here, obtaining the soft file of the book Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen can be done effortlessly by downloading in the web link page that we supply here. Of course, the Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen will certainly be all yours earlier. It's no need to await the book Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen to get some days later after buying. It's no have to go outside under the heats at mid day to head to the book establishment.
This is several of the advantages to take when being the participant as well as get the book Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen right here. Still ask exactly what's different of the various other website? We supply the hundreds titles that are produced by recommended writers and also authors, worldwide. The link to acquire and download Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen is likewise extremely easy. You may not find the difficult website that order to do more. So, the means for you to obtain this Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen will be so easy, won't you?
Based upon the Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen details that our company offer, you might not be so confused to be below and to be member. Get currently the soft documents of this book Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen and also wait to be yours. You saving could lead you to evoke the simplicity of you in reading this book Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen Even this is forms of soft data. You could truly make better opportunity to obtain this Marco Polo: From Venice To Xanadu, By Laurence Bergreen as the advised book to check out.
As the most celebrated European to explore Asia, Marco Polo was the original global traveler and the earliest bridge between East and West. A universal icon of adventure and discovery, he has inspired six centuries of popular fascination and spurious mythology. Now, from acclaimed author Laurence Bergreen, comes the first fully authoritative biography of one of the most enchanting figures in world history. In this masterly work, Marco Polo’s incredible odyssey–along with the Silk Road and through all the fantastic circumstances of his life–is chronicled in sumptuous and illuminating detail.
Drawing on original sources in more than half a dozen languages, and his own travels along Polo’s route in China and Mongolia, Bergreen explores the lingering controversies surrounding Polo’s legend, settling age-old questions and testing others for significance. Synthesizing history, biography, and travelogue, this is a timely chronicle of a man who extended the boundaries of human knowledge and imagination. Destined to be the definitive account of its subject for decades to come, Marco Polo takes us on a journey to the limits of history–and beyond.
- Sales Rank: #1724844 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Random House Audio
- Published on: 2007-10-23
- Released on: 2007-10-23
- Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 8
- Dimensions: 5.97" h x 1.19" w x 5.05" l, .55 pounds
- Running time: 600 minutes
- Binding: Audio CD
- Used Book in Good Condition
Amazon.com Review
Drawing on original writings and walking in the footsteps of Marco Polo himself, Laurence Bergreen's Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu is the most definitive biography of the legendary traveler to date, separating the man from his considerable myth.
Marco Polo: a traditional portrait; Granger Frontispiece of an early published edition of Marco Polo’s Travels, Nuremberg, Germany, 1477; Granger Kublai Khan, emperor of the world’s largest land-based empire; Granger Marco Polo commanded a Venetian galley similar to this in the Battle of Curzola; Granger Stone carving on the Marco Polo bridge; Laurence Bergreen Marco Polo’s vivid and occasionally misinterpreted descriptions of his travels inspired this medieval artist to depict dragons in China; Granger
Marco Polo timeline (All dates given in the Julian calendar): 1215 - Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan and Marco Polo's mentor, is born. 1254 - Marco Polo born in Venice, although one tradition locates his birthplace in the Venetian colony of Dalmatia. 1260 - Kublai Khan becomes leader of the Mongols and in 1271 founds the Yuan ("Origin") Dynasty. 1271 - Young Marco Polo leaves Venice with his father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo, bound for the court of Kublai Khan. 1274 - Kublai Khan oversees a failed Mongol invasion of Japan, as the Mongols, masters of the Steppe, meet their match at sea. 1275 - The three Polos arrive in Shang-du, Kublai Khan's summer palace immortalized by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as Xanadu; Marco begins his years in the service of the Khan. 1276 - 1293 - Marco travels throughout Asia, reaching the coast of India, and possibly Zanzibar, gathering intelligence for Kublai Khan and serving as a tax collector for the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty. 1281 - Kublai Khan's second failed invasion of Japan, a serious blow to his prestige. 1292 - The Polos escort Princess Kokachin to Persia to marry, their last formal service to Kublai Khan before departing. 1294 - Kublai Khan dies, freeing the Polo family, who undertake a dangerous return voyage by sea. 1295 - Marco, his father, and uncle, arrive in Venice after their 24-year absence. They have been away for so long that their fellow Venetians do not recognize them. 1298 - Marco is captured by the Genoese in the Battle of Curzola, according to some accounts, and confined to a cell in Genoa with a romance writer, Rustichello of Pisa, to whom he dictates his adventures in China, his reminiscences of Kublai Khan, his life among the Mongols. 1300 - Safely back in Venice, Marco Polo marries Donata Badoer; the couple has three daughters. 1324 - As manuscript versions of his exploits spread throughout Europe, Marco Polo dies in Venice, claiming that he did not reveal the half of his experiences in his remarkable Travels.
From Publishers Weekly
Even in his own day, the famed 13th-century travel writer Marco Polo was mocked as a purveyor of tall tales—gem-encrusted clothes, nude temple dancing girls, screaming tarantulas—in his narrative of his journey to the Chinese court of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. In this engrossing biography, Bergreen (James Agee: A Life), while allowing that mere facts... were never enough for Marco, finds him a roughly accurate and perceptive witness (aside from the romantic embellishments and outright fabrications concocted with his collaborator Rustichello of Pisa) who painted an influential and unusually sympathetic portrait of the much-feared Mongols. Bergreen follows Polo's disjointed commentary on everything from Chinese tax policy to asbestos manufacturing, crocodile hunting and Asian sexual mores—Polo was especially taken with the practice of sharing one's wife with passing travelers—while deftly glossing it with scholarship. Less convincing is Bergreen's attempt to add depth to Polo's lurid taste and over-heated imagination by portraying him as both a prophet of globalization and a pilgrim and explorer of the spirit. Polo's spiritual trek didn't take him very far, since he ended his days back in Venice as a greedy, litigious merchant. Still, the result is a long, strange, illuminating trip. 16 pages of photos, 3 maps. (Oct. 25)
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Laurence Bergreen, the author of books about Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin, James Agee, and Ferdinand Magellan, traveled Marco Polo’s route across Mongolia and China to conduct research for Marco Polo. Part biography, part travelogue, and part scholarly analysis, the book offers a glimpse of an exotic Asia that few knew at the time—and that Bergreen, with his rich research and stories, mostly corroborates. Bergreen posits Polo as an early promoter of globalization, an open-minded traveler who adopted some of Kublai Khan’s philosophies and carried them back to Europe. If Bergreen sometimes succumbs to speculation (Polo’s egotism is well recorded, though his time in China is not), Marco Polo will immortalize the famed traveler—again.
Copyright � 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Travelog Without Maps
By Donald F. Kaminski
For a book targeting the journeys of the famous Venetian merchant traveler, I am mystified by the absence of maps. One reading this book must make an extra effort to procure maps from other sources, a major inconvenience. Unless a map of the areas Bergreen described are reviewed, one will have no idea of the magnitude and tribulations of the trek to Cathay. Where are the steppes of thin atmosphere (where no birds travel); what is the desert he crosses on his way to Shengdu; where is Cambulac; and most importantly, where is Quinsai? The absence of maps is so upsetting as to make the remainder of the material lackluster. If I were his history and geography professor at Harvard and this was a thesis Bergreen submitted, he would have gotten a big fat "F." I don't understand such a mistake in publication. Where were the editors? His book on Columbus, at least, does have adequate maps. Too bad for this otherwise interesting story.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Epic life, well told.
By L. Wilde
Epic life, well told.
I've read the author's other work and I appreciate that he is clear which portions are well-supported and which are speculative. Some other books rely only on well-documented facts and others delve into speculation without revealing the shaky ground beneath. This book (and his others) get it right.
There was a lot in this book that surprised me.
My one and only suggestion is for a bigger, clearer map with more locations marked on it. Even though the travel path is not exactly known, it would have helped me stay in the story.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
this book seems as long as Polo's adventures
By B. Crosby
This book basically tells us that Marco Polo was a sycophant liar who may start with the truth but then embellish and elaborate to entertain and prop himself up. It's an odd thing. I have a friend who was in the Army and has traveled all over America with great stories, so you would think he doesn't need to make stuff up but he does. In fact, when he relays a story about something that actually happened, he struggles, but when he relays a story that's made up, he's a great storyteller. That's how I know he's lying. We're the opposite. It was just a long book and slow read.
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, by Laurence Bergreen PDF
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, by Laurence Bergreen EPub
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, by Laurence Bergreen Doc
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, by Laurence Bergreen iBooks
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, by Laurence Bergreen rtf
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, by Laurence Bergreen Mobipocket
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, by Laurence Bergreen Kindle
No comments:
Post a Comment