Traveling the Silk Road

Traveling the Silk Road PDF Author: Mark Norell
Publisher: Sterling Signature
ISBN: 9781402781377
Category : Silk Road
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
An elegantly, lavishly illustrated history of the legendary Silk Road and the cultural pathway it blazed for the modern world. Spanning centuries of history, this engrossing book--created in conjunction with the world-famous American Museum of Natural History--takes an epic journey to major stops in China, Uzbekistan, Iraq, and beyond. Not only did people from many lands trade their goods along this incredible network of routes, they also exchanged their languages, religions, art, and technology in what can be seen as man's first engagement in globalization."

Traveling the Silk Road

Traveling the Silk Road PDF Author: Mark Norell
Publisher: Sterling Signature
ISBN: 9781402781377
Category : Silk Road
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
An elegantly, lavishly illustrated history of the legendary Silk Road and the cultural pathway it blazed for the modern world. Spanning centuries of history, this engrossing book--created in conjunction with the world-famous American Museum of Natural History--takes an epic journey to major stops in China, Uzbekistan, Iraq, and beyond. Not only did people from many lands trade their goods along this incredible network of routes, they also exchanged their languages, religions, art, and technology in what can be seen as man's first engagement in globalization."

The Silk Road

The Silk Road PDF Author: Kathryn Davis
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555978789
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
A spellbinding novel about transience and mortality, by one of the most original voices in American literature The Silk Road begins on a mat in yoga class, deep within a labyrinth on a settlement somewhere in the icy north, under the canny guidance of Jee Moon. When someone fails to arise from corpse pose, the Astronomer, the Archivist, the Botanist, the Keeper, the Topologist, the Geographer, the Iceman, and the Cook remember the paths that brought them there—paths on which they still seem to be traveling. The Silk Road also begins in rivalrous skirmishing for favor, in the protected Eden of childhood, and it ends in the harrowing democracy of mortality, in sickness and loss and death. Kathryn Davis’s sleight of hand brings the past, present, and future forward into brilliant coexistence; in an endlessly shifting landscape, her characters make their way through ruptures, grief, and apocalypse, from existence to nonexistence, from embodiment to pure spirit. Since the beginning of her extraordinary career, Davis has been fascinated by journeys. Her books have been shaped around road trips, walking tours, hegiras, exiles: and now, in this triumphant novel, a pilgrimage. The Silk Road is her most explicitly allegorical novel and also her most profound vehicle; supple and mesmerizing, the journey here is not undertaken by a single protagonist but by a community of separate souls—a family, a yoga class, a generation. Its revelations are ravishing and desolating.

Shadow of the Silk Road

Shadow of the Silk Road PDF Author: Colin Thubron
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061809624
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Shadow of the Silk Road records a journey along the greatest land route on earth. Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers some seven thousand miles in eight months. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor, the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people, to the ancient port of Antioch—in perhaps the most difficult and ambitious journey he has undertaken in forty years of travel. The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. To travel it is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions and inventions. But alongside this rich and astonishing past, Shadow of the Silk Road is also about Asia today: a continent of upheaval. One of the trademarks of Colin Thubron's travel writing is the beauty of his prose; another is his gift for talking to people and getting them to talk to him. Shadow of the Silk Road encounters Islamic countries in many forms. It is about changes in China, transformed since the Cultural Revolution. It is about false nationalisms and the world's discontented margins, where the true boundaries are not political borders but the frontiers of tribe, ethnicity, language and religion. It is a magnificent and important account of an ancient world in modern ferment.

The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction

The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: James A. Millward
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199323852
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
The phrase "silk road" evokes vivid scenes of merchants leading camel caravans across vast stretches to trade exotic goods in glittering Oriental bazaars, of pilgrims braving bandits and frozen mountain passes to spread their faith across Asia. Looking at the reality behind these images, this Very Short Introduction illuminates the historical background against which the silk road flourished, shedding light on the importance of old-world cultural exchange to Eurasian and world history. On the one hand, historian James A. Millward treats the silk road broadly, to stand in for the cross-cultural communication between peoples across the Eurasian continent since at least the Neolithic era. On the other, he highlights specific examples of goods and ideas exchanged between the Mediterranean, Persia, India, and China, along with the significance of these exchanges. While including silks, spices, and travelers' tales of colorful locales, the book explains the dynamics of Central Eurasian history that promoted Silk Road interactions--especially the role of nomad empires--highlighting the importance of the biological, technological, artistic, intellectual, and religious interchanges across the continent. Millward shows that these exchanges had a profound effect on the old world that was akin to, if not on the scale of, modern globalization. He also disputes the idea that the silk road declined after the collapse of the Mongol empire or the opening of direct sea routes from Europe to Asia, showing how silk road phenomena continued through the early modern and modern expansion of the Russian and Chinese states across Central Asia. Millward concludes that the idea of the silk road has remained powerful, not only as a popular name for boutiques and restaurants, but also in modern politics and diplomacy, such as U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's "Silk Road Initiative" for India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Adventures on the Ancient Silk Road

Adventures on the Ancient Silk Road PDF Author: Priscilla Galloway
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780329743376
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Provides accounts of journeys undertaken by three men along the Silk Road, including seventh-century Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang, Mongolian warrior Genghis Khan, and thirteenth-century merchant Marco Polo.

The Silk Road - China and the Karakorum Highway

The Silk Road - China and the Karakorum Highway PDF Author: Jonathan Tucker
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
ISBN: 9781780763569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This beautifully illustrated book is intended as background reading for travelers on one of the most popular sections of the Silk Road—the Xian to Kashgar route through China, linking with the Karakorum Highway through Northern Pakistan. The ancient trade routes between Europe and the Orient, specifically between Rome and the old Chinese capital of Xian, endured for almost two thousand years. Along with trade goods came new ideas—religions, medical knowledge, and scientific and technological innovations passed in both directions and the Silk Road became a great network of veins and arteries, carrying the life-blood of nations across the known world. The Silk Road is a concise, more portable version of Jonathan Tucker’s acclaimed book, The Silk Road: Art and History, acclaimed by the Literary Review as “a beautiful book . . . the most informative work on the subject.” Replete with fascinating details of the main historical sites, works of art, accounts by ancient and modern travelers, legends, poetry and other literary references, photographs, maps, and site-plans, this will be essential reading for all those interested in or planning to travel the ancient Silk Road.

The Silk Road

The Silk Road PDF Author: British Library
Publisher: Serindia Publications, Inc.
ISBN: 9781932476132
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description


Journeys on the Silk Road

Journeys on the Silk Road PDF Author: Joyce Morgan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0762787333
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
When a Chinese monk broke into a hidden cave in 1900, he uncovered one of the world’s great literary secrets: a time capsule from the ancient Silk Road. Inside, scrolls were piled from floor to ceiling, undisturbed for a thousand years. The gem within was the Diamond Sutra of AD 868. This key Buddhist teaching, made 500 years before Gutenberg inked his press, is the world’s oldest printed book. The Silk Road once linked China with the Mediterranean. It conveyed merchants, pilgrims and ideas. But its cultures and oases were swallowed by shifting sands. Central to the Silk Road’s rediscovery was a man named Aurel Stein, a Hungarian-born scholar and archaeologist employed by the British service. Undaunted by the vast Gobi Desert, Stein crossed thousands of desolate miles with his fox terrier Dash. Stein met the Chinese monk and secured the Diamond Sutra and much more. The scroll’s journey—by camel through arid desert, by boat to London’s curious scholars, by train to evade the bombs of World War II—merges an explorer’s adventures, political intrigue, and continued controversy. The Diamond Sutra has inspired Jack Kerouac and the Dalai Lama. Its journey has coincided with the growing appeal of Buddhism in the West. As the Gutenberg Age cedes to the Google Age, the survival of the Silk Road’s greatest treasure is testament to the endurance of the written word.

The Silk Road: Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran

The Silk Road: Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran PDF Author: Jonathan Tucker
Publisher: Tauris Parke
ISBN: 9781838600372
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Stretching from the ancient Chinese capital of Xian across the expanses of Central Asia to Rome, the Silk Road was, for 1,500 years, a vibrant network of arteries that carried the lifeblood of nations across the world. Along a multitude of routes everything was exchanged: exotic goods, art, knowledge, religion, philosophy, disease and war. From the East came silk, precious stones, tea, jade, paper, porcelain, spices and cotton; from the West, horses, weapons, wool and linen, aromatics, entertainers and exotic animals. From its earliest beginnings in the days of Alexander the Great and the Han dynasty, the Silk Road expanded and evolved, reaching its peak during the Tang dynasty and the Byzantine Empire and gradually withering away with the decline of the Mongol Empire. In this beautifully illustrated book, which covers the Central Asian section of the Silk Road - from Lake Issyk-kul through Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, the Kyzyl Kum Desert, Khiva and Merv to Herat, Kabul and Iran - Jonathan Tucker uses travellers' anecdotes and a wealth of literary and historical sources to celebrate the cultural heritage of the countries that lie along the Silk Road and illuminate the lives of those who once travelled through the very heart of the world.

Life Along the Silk Road

Life Along the Silk Road PDF Author: Susan Whitfield
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520232143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The Silk Road was the most traveled trade route for over 1,000 years until it was eclipsed by maritime trade. Whitfield presents composite stories of merchants, soldiers, artists, and princesses who traveled the route, and presents its history through their personal experiences.