The Silk Roads


The Silk Roads: A New History of the World is a 2015 non-fiction book written by Peter Frankopan, a historian at the University of Oxford.

Author

Peter Frankopan is a historian at Worcester College, Oxford and director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. His areas of focus are the history of the Byzantine Empire, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Russia and the interdependence of Islam and Christianity. He has also studied Greek literature of the Middle Ages.

Summary

The traditional view is that Western civilization descends from the Romans, who were in turn heir to the Greeks, who, in some accounts, were heirs to the Egyptians. Frankopan argues that the Persian Empire was the actual centre point of the rise of Western civilization.

Reception

Reviews on The Silk Roads were generally positive and were published by The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Times. and The New York Review of Books. In June 2016 The Silk Roads was chosen to be the Waterstones non-fiction book of the month.