George Lane is Lecturer in the History of the Middle East and Central Asia, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

[With] implications for such current themes as globalization, global villages, and global conditions for peace . . . this book tells a grand story in the brief compass of seven chapters, with a well-written historical introduction, a helpful chronology, sixteen biographies portraying the international cast of personages who traversed empires, and a glossary indispensable to a work of this nature. Twenty-one primary documents give historical credence to the Mongol story itself, a story that is told only in the oral tradition of The Secret History of the Mongols. Maps and illustrations round out the material in support of the text. -- The History Teacher