Marco Polo: The Journey That Changed the World

by John Man

In 1271, a young Italian merchant named Marco Polo embarked on a groundbreaking expedition from Venice, through the Middle East and Central Asia to China. His extraordinary reports of his experiences introduced medieval Europe to an exotic new world of emperors and concubines, amazing cities, huge armies, unusual spices and cuisine, and imperial riches. Marco Polo also revealed the wonders of Xanadu, the summer capital of Mongol emperor Kublai Khan.
Almost 750 years later, acclaimed author John Man traveled in Marco Polo's footsteps to Xanadu and then on to Beijing and through modern China in search of the history behind the legend. In this enthralling chronicle, Man draws on his own journey, new archaeological findings, and deep archival study to paint a vivid picture of Marco Polo and the great court of Kublai Khan.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, China, Travel, Biography, Medieval, Asia

400 pages, Paperback

First published August 13, 2009

About the author

John Anthony Garnet Man is a British historian and travel writer. His special interests are China, Mongolia and the history of written communication. He takes particular pleasure in combining historical narrative with personal experience.

He studied German and French at Keble College, Oxford, before doing two postgraduate courses, a diploma in the History and Philosophy of Science at Oxford and Mongolian at the School of Oriental and African Studies, completing the latter in 1968. After working in journalism with Reuters and in publishing with Time-Life Books, he turned to writing, with occasional forays into film, TV and radio.

In the 1990s, he began a trilogy on the three major revolutions in writing: writing itself, the alphabet and printing with movable type. This has so far resulted in two books, Alpha Beta and The Gutenberg Revolution, both republished in 2009. The third, on the origin of writing, is on hold, because it depends on access to Iraq.

He returned to the subject of Mongolia with Gobi: Tracking the Desert, the first book on the region since the 1920s. Work in Mongolia led to Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Resurrection, which has so far appeared in 18 languages. Attila the Hun and Kublai Khan: The Mongol King Who Remade China completed a trilogy on Asian leaders. A revised edition of his book on Genghis Khan, with the results of an expedition up the mountain on which he is supposed to be buried, was upcoming in autumn 2010.

The Terracotta Army coincided with the British Museum exhibition (September 2007- April 2008). This was followed by The Great Wall. The Leadership Secrets of Genghis Khan combines history and leadership theory. Xanadu: Marco Polo and the Discovery of the East was published in autumn 2009, and Samurai: The Last Warrior, the story of Saigō Takamori's doomed 1877 rebellion against the Japanese emperor, was published in February 2011.

In 2007 John Man was awarded Mongolia's Friendship Medal for his contributions to UK-Mongolian relations.

Reviews

[Jason Pettus · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

This book declares right in its subtitle that it's about the journey Marco Polo took from Italy to China back in the Medieval Age, becoming essentially the very first white person in history to give a written account to Europeans of the Far East, but that turns out to be not quite true; only half of this relatively slim book is about that, with the entire second half being a detailed archeological and anthropological guide to emperor Kublai Khan, his summer imperial city Xanadu, and other such details about ancient China that don't really have much to do with Polo or his journey at all. As such, then, although the book itself is certainly well-done, it's still getting some points knocked off today, merely because of false advertising; for I wanted to know a lot more about Polo and his journey itself, the whole reason I picked up this book, while the account given here is not much more than an extra-long Wikipedia entry, a disappointing realization for a book that promotes itself as a 350-page guide to the actual trip. Buyer beware.

Out of 10: 8.0

UPDATE: After a visit to Wikipedia, I've come to learn that Man himself originally titled this book Xanadu, giving a much clearer indication of its contents; but that when HarperCollins acquired it, they were the ones who changed it to Marco Polo: The Journey That Changed the World, so that they could release it at the same time as the Marco Polo Netflix series and pick up some cheap publicity. Shame on you, HarperCollins.

[Stefan Mitev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Марко Поло е най-известният пътешественик в историята на света. Неговата книга, описваща приключенията от Венеция до империята на Кублай кан, продължава да е актуална и днес - над 700 години след написването ѝ. Оригиналното заглавие е "Пътешествия", известна още и като "Милионът". Това е първият източник, който разкрива на европейската публика непознатите дотогава цетрална Азия и Китай. От книгата за първи път се научава и за съществуването на Япония. Творбата звучи като приказка, която наистина се е случила - обикновено момче пътува с баща си през непознати страни до владетеля на най-голямата империя по това време. Приети са в "горната столица" - Ксанаду (Шангду), станала нарицателно за митично място и от поемата на Самюъл Тейлър Колридж със същото име.

Марко Поло прекарва седемнадесет години в Азия, като става доверен приятел на Кублай кан. Завръщайки се в Европа с невиждани скъпоценни камъни и богатства, венецианецът става известен с книгата си, която пише (или по-точно диктува) по спомени и записки в затвор в Генуа. Често е обвиняван в преувеличаване и дори директно фабрикуване на места, личности и събития. Но днес е безспорно, че Марко Поло достига днешен Китай и се връща в Европа с разказите си за невиждани хора и земи. Книгата му дава тласък на последващи пътеществия и открития, включително и на мисията на Христофор Колумб.

Пътешествието до Ксанаду и обратно ни връща в приказните времена на опасни приключения до непознати екзотични земи.

[JackieB · Rating 1 out of 5]

I abandoned this because the ocus of the book wasn't clear. It was mostly about Marco Polo and then there was what seemed to me a random mention of another European who happened to have discovered something near the area which the author was describing. There was also a lot of speculation. The author would give a detailed description of a landscape which Marco Polo would have seen. Then he would confess that actually, Marco Polo never wrote about that part of the country, but John Man thought he probably had travelled there because it seemed the most obvious way for him to travel. I know an author has to fill in gaps in this type of book, but I didn't see the point of spending so much time on speculation, I would have preferred him to concentrate on the areas which Marco Polo had written about, even if there is some doubt whether he travelled to all of the places he describes in his book.

[Daren · Rating 3 out of 5]

The edition I read is titled Xanadu - Marco Polo and Europe's Discovery of the East. I guess I had expected it to be a bit more about Xanadu, but we were largely done on that topic by chapter 6.

It is heavily about Kublai Khan, and his interactions with Marco Polo, which is fine, but leaves me now wondering what else John Man's Kublai Khan book has to offer.

This is probably the least focussed of Man's books I have read. It suggests to me there probably wasn't enough subject matter to keep it focussed on Xanadu, or on Marco Polo, and it ended up a little broad.

It was interesting enough, but didn't really take me beyond any of the other Marco Polo focussed books that travel authors have written.

Just scraped into a 3 star rating, but only just...

[Bill Potter · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you want to know about the authors trip along the Silk Road, this book is for you. If you want to know about other historians/archeologists trip along the Silk Road, this book is for you. If you want to know about anything but Marco Polo, this book is for you. However, if you want to learn about Marco Polo, go elsewhere.

[MaryCatherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting retelling of Marco Polo's travels, in the style of a travelogue, as the author retraces the Polo's' route across Asia, investigating select details in depth, such as the construction and movement of the Great Khan's "pleasure dome," accompanied by a Chinese archaeologist to help discern clues and linguistic keys to interpreting Marco Polo's stories of life in the court of Kublai Khan. Quite a good review of Marco Polo's own memoirs. I enjoyed the Simon Vance narrated version. The book reads like a NOVA or National Geographic series, so it is entertaining and informative, though not arduous at all. Apparently, the book is a Netflix series, as well.

[MichelleG · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not at all what I was expecting. Titled Xanadu I expected that the book would have a lot more to do with "Xanadu" than the fleeting references that it actually gets, rather the book is a third person tale of Marco Polo's life and adventures, which while a fascinating tale and quite entertaining, though more educational, was not what I expected.

[Phillip III · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not what I expected. I ordered the book because it was the basis for the 2 season show on Netflix.

What I found was an entertaining "journey" where the author, John Man, followed in what was presumably Marco Polo's footsteps to Xanadu. He goes into great detail about the landscape, and measurements, the people, and the global history.

As a caveat, Man does explain how Marco Polo was something of an exaggerator. That plenty of Marco Polo's own book may have been filled with part-truths, and hyperbole. In a way, it is as if Man was both trying to prove and disprove Polo's trek.

I was hoping for more of Marco Polo's actual adventures, and stories, real or imagined. I suppose reading his own book would provide more of that.

Not to get me wrong, this is a wonderful, and wonderfully well-written book, full of information without being boring, or taking away from the author's clean narrative.

(It just had nothing to do with the Netflix show -- which I completely understand was fiction, based on, and all of that).

Phillip Tomasso
Author of Before the Sun Sets

[James Junke · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and deeply researched read. Retraces MP’s travels, fills in the many blanks in the story, providing a plethora of intriguing insights. Integrates a tremendous amount of diverse study in a culturally knowledgeable and sensitive way. Fortunately produced in the short time in the first decade of this century when China was most open to the world.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

An idiosyncratic but fascinating look at the life and journeys of Marco Polo, supplemented by the author's own travels, the accounts of 19th and 20th centuries travelers, recent archaeology, and a bit of historiography.

[Joseph · Rating 1 out of 5]

A word of caution: never believe book cover blurbs. I hate panning any book but this one desperately needs it. The front cover says "I heave read everything written on Marco Polo, and Jahn Man's book is, by far,my favorite work on the subject. It's not only an overdue and important historical study, it's an entertaining ride every step of the way." I should have suspected this blurb because it was from the creator of Netflix's series of the same name.

On the back cover the following: "An erudite and lively piece of travel writing, an an excellent read." Or: "An engaging piece of storytelling a very companionable journey of exploration."

The book is anything but entertaining, engaging or exciting. Actually, it's boring, unintelligible at points and nothing more than a mash-up between a current day travel guide, a traveler's memoir and a dump of disparate facts gleaned from a variety of historical sources. Worst of all, the book jumps from today to late-13th century randomly and needs massive editing both in structure and style.

For example: "Impey had recorded the lake, but he had not guessed why it was there. The problem was that every now and then more water flowed through the valley than could be contained in the lake and moats, with the result that the whole place was subject to occasional flooding. Moats would fill with silt, and had to be redug. Perhaps the Cane Palace itself once threatened to float away. Xanadu's walls could one day be undermined by water.

The solution, obviously, was to build in controls, and Kubai had just the man for the job: Guo Shoujing (1231-1316), the most famous Yan engineer, who deserves to be far better known to the outside world than he is. It was he who was largely responsible for water management in the new capital of Dadu, and towards the end of Kublai's reign he arrived to save Xanadu.

We parked in the lee of a hill. 'This mountain is called Lung Gang [Dragon Mound],' said Wei. 'Look: the flood could come any time. The mountains are only three kilometres away, very dangerious in wet weather. So this is where Guo decided to build a dam.'

I had read about Guo, knew he was influential in designing the flow of water through Beijing - I'll explain how later - but had no idea he had also been in Xanadu."

A few pages further on, it continues: "On the journey south on the eastern road, what shall I tell you (to paraphrase Marco)? Very little to do with him, or Kublai. The lake, which already supplies impressive fish to Duolun, is in immese and empty hill country, which, if Duolun goes on growing at current rates, will no doubt soon have its first golf course. Further on, soft hills and the occasional village, where ducks and cattle share the road with carts and the few cars, gave way to an immense embankment and a new tunnel through a mountain, a major link between Hebei and Inner Mongolia for settlers and trucks.

'Wei, this pass is new. There's no other way through. Do you really believe that there was an old route along the river?'

He was silent."

But enough, you get the picture. There are pages and pages of this mix of dialogue, description, geography, scenery, diary, Chinese names and terms. I just gave up.

[Mindy McAdams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read several very good books about travels and trade along the Silk Road, and I've long wanted to know more about Marco Polo. I probably bought this book about 10 years ago (my copy was published in 2009), with high hopes that it would satisfy my curiosity and be a fun read, not too heavy, but historically reliable. It has absolutely met all my expectations and then some. I'm very happy I finally got around to reading it!

Author John Man has written several historical books about China and the Mongol rulers. He's traveled to China and some of that shows up here, with details about his own several visits to the ruined site of Xanadu (Shangdu), the summer palace of Kublai Khan. It's a well-researched book but with a bare minimum of footnotes, clearly intended for a casual general audience. There's no attempt to exhaustively chronicle everything in Marco Polo's memoirs, but we do gradually learn that there have been many editions and many disputes — in fact, there's a whole field of scholarship devoted to Marco Polo, his travels, and his years in the service of the Khan. In spite of some discussions around whether Marco made it all up (he certainly did make up some of it!), Man tells us there is now no doubt that Marco Polo, a Venetian who really lived in the 13th century, did travel all the way to China, lived there for more than 10 years, and returned to tell the tale. Names, places, and Marco's use of certain Mongol words (which he otherwise could not have known) confirm it.

Don't be put off by the fact that a questionable 10-part Netflix series was said to be inspired by this book — this is no fictionalized swashbuckling re-enactment. Man loves to tell a good story, and sometimes he tells a very good one that's much disputed — and carefully tells us so. He equally tells us when pretty much everything in a tale can be verified, and he mentions when a particular anecdote appears in many (or few) of the various translations and editions of Marco's book.

I had no trouble sailing through 70–100 pages a day of this very entertaining book. I learned about fermented mare's milk, bamboo architecture, the sorry condition of the Great Wall in the late 1200s, and the long voyage of a princess named Cocachin to marry a Persian king. I learned about the rule of Kublai Khan (1215–1294), grandson of Genghis, and how he conquered southern China (he already controlled all of the north) but failed to subdue either Japan or the southern half of Vietnam, then called Champa.

One tidbit that helped me make sense of the whole "two Venetians travel to China with the teenage son of one of them" thing: Marco's father and uncle had previously journeyed to the court of the Khan and met with his favor. He gave them a golden pass (paizi), good throughout his realm, that not only ensured their safe passage but also compelled people to provide support, provisions, horses, camels. When the two Polo men returned to Venice the first time, Marco (who had been born after they left) was 15. Two years later they set out for the second time, paizi in hand, accompanied by young Marco.

Highly recommended!
.

[Noelle M · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is just chocked full of interesting tidbits of information. It leaves me with THE big question: How is it Europeans forgot about the Orient after Rome's fall? I can grasp the notion of sand covering a bygone civilization's remains thus wiping out memory of them, but accessible functioning nations just forgetting each other? This is a pacifist's dream come true!

Anyway the distance between Venice and ancient Cathay is roughly 13,000 miles of bad road one way, but the Polos and John Man made the trip and lived to tell about the conditions of Kublai Khan's summer palace at 700 year intervals. New was definitely better, but old is more than a little interesting.

The Mongol "khan" meant a King of Kings which worked out fine until Kublai's gout and overeating and imbibing got the better of him. In the Japanese he discovered his limitations, though the Vietnamese gave him a run for his money too. As Mircea Eliade pointed out in his work about sacred and profane existence, a man who considers himself the cosmic umbilicus cuts a tragic figure going it alone against the universe without supernatural abilities. Kublai was a gifted guy, but not so much in the supernatural department, but he still did pretty well for himself.

Then there's the story about evil Ahmad the Uzbek, a true Snidley Whiplash who came close to tying Kublai to the tracks in front of an oncoming political locomotive.

Man refutes academic denials that Polo did the things he wrote about. Marco was quite a guy.

[Dsinglet · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Man takes a journey through China and Mongolia trying to travel Marco Polos route to Zanadu the summer palace of the Great Kublai Khan. His descriptions of the terrain and obstacles along the way are fasinating. However, he gives few insights into Marco or tha older Polo brothers. In fact he seems to delight in debunking Marcos own stories of his visit. He says many of the towns Marco described, he couldn't have seen and much of his story was exaggeration. After so many years, I'm sure places and names have changed a lot. He may have called his book "The Marco Polo Myth".

[Robu-sensei · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marco!

[J the Bookworm · Rating 1 out of 5]

Actual details about Marco, his actions and adventures are few and far between.

[Marks54 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess it depends on what you want in an historical account. This book provides some distinct choices, all at once, without much effort at sorting them out. Book club duty calls, however, and good discussion groups are not that common.

First there is the travel book about the author’s own travels that cross the path of Marco Polo. These are fine enough, I suppose, although there is a thriving literature on the Silk Road and its many variants, although more recent entrants also have a hit and miss flavor to them. I will nor be traveling the road myself - for lots of reasons - so I put more of a burden on the narrative to move the story along. Man’s book was OK on this but I wasn’t expecting the travel log.

Then there is the historical account of Marco Polo and his visit. OK, it was a cool trip and gained posterity for MP. But I am familiar with many of the details already. I haven’t gotten around to reading the original account and am aware of its failings, so Man’s critical gloss on the Marco Polo story is reasonable, but leads me to wonder what is going on in the book. Is this about what really happened? Is this about MP’s storytelling skills or his marketing efforts? Is the focus of the historical account on MP or on the great Khan’s court and the establishment of the new dynasty? I know I sound picky, but it is not unreasonable to ask about whether to pay attention to the story, the storyteller, both, or even more (such as Man as the meta-storyteller).

Finally, there is the archaeology - the “stones and bones” side of the story. I will grant that it is challenging in the extreme to identify the modern locations and remaining residual evidence of the places talked about by MP. ...and archaeologists are amazing people - tough and persistent and really good at linking artifacts with their contexts. But what would one expect of efforts to track down an oddly documented visit to China from the thirteenth century? If one is going to tell this story, then details and photos are important, but how this fits into the rest of the book is not entirely clear to me - although I may well visit the White Pagoda the next time I travel to Beijing (unclear right now, things being how they are politically). But Google Earth is not as helpful as the author thinks it is. ...and did I really need to know what it would take to build my own stately pleasure dome, ala Coleridge?

The bits and pieces are all interesting. Putting them all together is less so. Overall, this is a mixed bag. I may end up watching part of the Netflix series, at least the start of it.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

A medieval travelogue that serves as biography brought me to British historian John Man‘s retracing of Italian Marco Polo‘s journey to China in service of Mongolian general and statesman Kublai Khan from 1271 to 1295. First published in November 2014, 'Marco Polo: The Journey that Changed the World' serves partly as a modern day correction to the Rustichello da Pisa and Marco Polo co-written 13th century autobiography 'The Travels of Marco Polo'.

The Rustichello da Pisa work, which in its original form has been lost to history, has been reworked from multiple languages. That book is thought to be true in broad strokes rather than a firsthand telling of legitimate testimony and experience. The John Man book that is our focus here made efforts to visit historical places in the reconstructed original accounts to make judgments of truths in the original accounts informed by Man‘s sense of what is likely, possible and improbable from the reassembled original. With commentaries on original cultures and religions a part of 'The Travels of Marco Polo', Man comments on the fact of the commentary as well as the objectives in the original writing.

Man‘s book is maybe half about the journey that Marco Polo took as a European visiting Far East Asia, with the other half, as Jason Pettus observes, serving as “a detailed archeological and anthropological guide to emperor Kublai Khan, his summer imperial city Xanadu, and other such details about ancient China that don’t really have much to do with Polo or his journey at all.” Xanadu, in the usage of Pettus and Man, is thought to be Shangdu, Mongolia, China. The book title focuses more on the first half of the story rather than the full scope of the book as part of a marketing decision related to a television series that had been released ahead of the John Man book.

The overall work as presented here today offered insight into a pair of related subjects that were interesting to me. I hadn’t realized ahead of the reading that the focus of the second half of the book would get into subjects that offered historical knowledge in a direction slightly afar from what I would have known to expect. This said, I grant 'Marco Polo: The Journey that Changed the World' by John Man 3.75-stars on a scale of 1-to-5.

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was interesting. I realized how little I knew about Marco Polo, the time period he lived in and the part of the world he traveled to. I read the book with my two favorite atlases by my side: National Geographic's Atlas of Our World published in 1993 and a historical atlas I got years ago with my subscription to Newsweek Magazine. You cannot read this book about Marco Polo's travels without reading and learning about Kublai Khan and the world he ruled The historical atlas gives me a visual of just how much of the world the Mongols ruled. When the average person reads about the Mongols in their high school history class they get the sense that the Mongols rode in like a herd of locusts, conquered and then disappeared back to Mongolia. But this book makes you realize that is not the case.

I enjoyed reading about how architects tried to reconstruct Kublai Khan's pleasure dome in Xanadu, how they think it was built, how the colors were made for the paint that decorated the dome and that Xanadu really existed.

But I really got bogged down in the Chinese names, the many variations there of and the author explaining the many variations of history - what Marco Polo wrote, why it may not be accurate and what current historians think. I almost put the book down and didn't finish it. Now I wish I had skipped that part of it. Because the last several chapters are really interesting and informative.

The author writes about the cultural norms for women. He writes about when China went to war against Japan and later against Vietnam. This is history I knew nothing about.

An aside to reading this book I gained information that helped in a lesson my Sunday school class was having about the spread of Christianity. Someone made a comment that they did not realize there were Christians in China and how the church survived the Communist. Well, I learned from this book that Kublai Kahn's mother was a Christian from Persia and that he encouraged Christians in China. So while the church may not be thriving in China it does have a long history there.

You never know what you will learn from reading a book

[Allison Piehl · Rating 3 out of 5]

My real rating for this book is 3.5 stars. It's quite good, and full of so many interesting facts and speculations - always identified as such. It shines the most when Marco Polo, rather than those he encountered on his journeys, is the subject. (For a closer look at the Mongol Empire I would recommend Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World instead.) The book has a casual, non-academic tone, which makes it highly readable, but also occasionally confusing - as if you're out at a bar with a friend trying to squeeze as many details as possible into a story about his favorite subject. Man didn't choose a standard convention for referring to the cities Marco visited, most of which have at least two or three names - sometimes many more. This results in frequent explanations about place names that can be distracting and occasionally irritating.

Near the beginning of the book, Man mentions that you can find some specific coordinates on Google Earth for one of the locations he discusses. As the book progresses, it becomes clear that following along on an online map will make the journey much easier to understand. I didn't start doing this until later in the book and wish I'd started sooner. Following an online map also gives you the opportunity for some comedic relief or regret about the wheel of progress - along one part of Marco's route (now the Karakoram Highway) I located a Pizza Hut.

[Chris Wares · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marco Polo’s Travels are short on detail and so tracing his journey almost 800 years later is a challenge. With limited detail on which to build his narrative the author is forced to use a range of studies to get close to Marco Polo and make sense of the story that he left behind.

In parts he traces Marco’s journey across the map, elsewhere he recounts how Marco Polo and his ghost writer wrote the book and how the truth may have been hidden by faulty memory, self-censorship and poor translation.

The most interesting part of the book was the author’s visit to the ruins of Xanadu and the way stations along the imperial route. This part of the book is much more vivid and brings the reader much closer to the court of Kublai Khan and his court (if not Marco Polo particularly).

One has the suspicion that this is the meat of the book and that the author felt compelled to pad out a book by contextualising this archeological exploration of The Great Khan and the Mongol court in the form of a more “reader friendly” book about Marco Polo. It makes for a good book and helpfully discerns what can and can’t be believed of Marco’s tales. But I think it might have been a more interesting and unique book if it had delved further into the archeology of the Mongols.

[Eskana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened on audiobook

This book was bit of a mixed bag. I went into it hoping for a historical retelling of Marco Polo's life and journeys based on various sources, and in part, I got that. But the narrative meanders. The author interpolates Marco's experiences with his own, telling about his journeys in china (sometimes) and spending probably at least two chapters telling us about his own multiple experiences in the archeological site of Xanadu/Shangdu. There is a lengthy investigation into how Kublai's fabled pleasure dome (tent palace) could have worked. and the author frequently points out Marco's textual exaggerations and misinformation.

All in all, I don't think I learned a ton about Marco Polo, but I feel like I learned enough about his writing and the impact he had (in the later chapters.) Personally, I still feel that the author admires Marco Polo for who he was and his writing, but I don't think this book is a definitive take on his travels. While this may be in part because of the sparse nature of his writing (apparently, much of what he wrote was based on other people's experiences or not sufficiently detailed), I feel like there could have been more to this book, and probably less focus on the author's experiences and conjecture.

[Mihnea Nemes · Rating 4 out of 5]

The source for the Netflix series - enjoyable and illuminating

I had been captivated by Netflix’s Marco Polo - and disappointed that the show was canceled after only two seasons, ending on a cliffhanger, halfway through the intended story arc. With this book, I traveled back to the fascinating world of Kublai Khan's empire and learned the historical facts behind the Netflix series. John Man's book was used as a source by the series' creator, John Fusco.

"Marco Polo: The Journey that Changed the World" focuses on the Venetian's 17 years of service to Kublai Khan, but does include chapters that trace his voyage to China and back, and what happened to him after his return home. Many of the characters that are central to the TV series existed in real life, albeit in slightly different circumstances: Kublai Khan and his empress Chabui, prince Kaidu and his daughter Kutulun, princess Cocachin, and the concubine Mei Li.

The book reads easily, like a travelogue. The author partly retraces Marco Polo's steps by venturing to China in the present day (2005) in search of vestiges of the once great Mongolian empire. I found the read enjoyable and illuminating. Definitely recommended for the fans of the series!

[Gabriel Gioia Ávila Oliveira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esse livro na verdade não se chama Marco Polo, e sim Xanadu. Seu conteúdo, consequentemente, é muito mais voltado à construção do mito da cidade fantástica e à viagem para chegar lá a partir da Europa, tanto a de Marco quanto a do autor, procurando seguir seguir os passos do primeiro. A mudança de título tem a ver com a produção Marco Polo da Netflix, que usou esta obra como fonte para a reprodução da realidade de Marco na China, resultando em um título que causa quebra de expecativa no leitor que quer aprender especificamente sobre Marco Polo, e não sobre a viagem de um acadêmico moderno ou sobre a história da cidade de Xanadu.

Alinhada essa expecativa, porém, esta obra é uma leitura agradável e informativa, dentro da sua proposta original. Já tendo sobrevivido às extensivas notas e apêndices de Henry Yule na tradução da obra de Marco, esse livro foi um complemento mais pé no chão, perto da minha realidade. Esse quebra cabeça de tema Marco Polo acabou sendo bem vindo.

[Queen Elsa]

i'm a little concerned about how many errors I caught in the epilogue of this book. Gregory Peck didn't play Marco Polo in the 1938 movie. Gary Cooper did. And the way the sentence reads leads me to believe that the author thinks that "Princess Kukachin" ( Sigrid Gurie's character) is an actor rather than a fictional character. Also the Protagonist of Citizen Kane is Charles Foster Kane. Not "John Foster Kane". These mistakes are harmless enough since cinema isn't the focus of the book, and I assume that the more relevant details are checked with more rigour, but I find it tremendously irksome none the less, I mean, these things can be checked with a simple visit to Imdb or Letterboxd, and has the author honestly never seen Citizen Kane?

[Ty Verstraeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reader beware, I read that this book had its title changed by the publisher to capitalize on the Marco Polo Netflix series that came out around the same time, which makes a lot of sense given the content.

This book is more about filling in the blanks of Marco Polo’s story and exploring the landscape of the Mongol empire at the peak of Kublai Khan’s power, than it is about a historical retelling of The Travels. That being said, there is a ton of fascinating information about how the empire was run and how its people lived, with some truly revelatory chapters about Marco’s secrets and legacy that made it well worth the read. Just be prepared for some chapters dedicated to geography and archaeology, which don’t translate super well from lived experience to page

[Filip · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book is by far the only form NOT suitable for traveling experiences. Books about traveling can never fully grasp sheer experience of new exciting places author visits. In my opinion documentary filmmaking is best for that kind of form.
Marco Polo is greatest explorer ever. But his traveling accounts are notoriously unreliable. It is very hard to distinguish facts from folklore, fiction from real life events. This book is not going to help you understand him. Author goes on and on about Polo and everything is very unreadable. But worst of all book is very boring. Author mentions bunch of places that has zero resonance to western audience. There was map but it didn't help one bit.
As I said it is beter to watch documentary film about Marco Polo that to read about him.

[Tom Lashnits · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that retells and analyzes the famous late-1200s trip to China made by Marco Polo, along with father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo. The trio spent over 20 years trekking across Asia to China and at the behest of Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan) traveling around the extensive kingdom. After Marco returned to Venice he fought in a sea battle against Genoa, was captured and while in prison dictated his adventures to fellow inmate Rustichello. Marco tells some fantastic tales, and according to Man some of them are actually true. Fascinating book opens our eyes to Asian geography and history.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wikipedia: The Netflix show is 20% accurate.
This book: The Netflix show is 90% accurate if you take Marco's word for what happened and 80% accurate if you don't.

The author in effect says, "so, Marco is probably exaggerating here, but he is kind of the only source. There are so many different versions of his story that it took on the form of mythology in a sense. But it probably wasn't his idea to use trebuchets. Also Marco's Great to the power of 40 grandson contacted me and he apparently is a famous master diplomat."

The checklist of things in the show having a basis in history, even if some archeologists overlook evidence, is fairly long.

[Marla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this book to help supplement Marco Polos book "The Travels". Very much enjoyed the linking of language from Polo's book to current language used to describe people and places as well as current names of creatures and peoples he tries to describe. For example, the ruc (aepyornis Maximus) and unicorns (black rhinos). He also does a great job of separating what is real and what was folk lore as well as great descriptions of the landscape he travelled and the people he met. Really a must if reading Marco Polo and wanting to understand what he was writing.