Rise of the Mongols

Christopher P. Atwood is Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania.

"Our modern fascination with the Mongol empire only increases with each passing year. One global myth even claims that Chinggis Khan’s DNA can be found among most of the races of the world today—a story of genetic seeding that surely testifies to the obsessive awe with which the rulers of the largest empire in the history of the world are still held. The Rise of the Mongols: Five Chinese Sources, is thus a timely, important, and welcome addition to the limited sources on the Mongols currently available to us in English translation.  Unlike the Yuanshi—the Chinese history of the Mongol dynasty that is retroactively written—Christopher Atwood’s and Lynn Struve’s five Chinese sources recount the important early days of the Mongol ascension to power through contemporary and even eyewitness accounts situated in both southern and northern China.  Whether you're teaching Marco Polo, or The Secret History of the Mongols, or courses in early globalism, you’ll find this invaluable collection of newly-translated Chinese sources indispensable."—Geraldine Heng, author of The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, and Founder and Director of the Global Middle Ages Project