Silk Road: Monks, Warriors & Merchants (Updated Edition | Odyssey Illustrated Guides) by Luce Boulnois

A sumptuous historical survey of "The Road" that also offers itineraries, practicalities, and the whereabouts of top-rated related museum collections. Luce Boulnois has poured a lifetime of prodigious, passionate scholarship into this seminal book. She explores the encounter between East and West across the vast continental expanse that separates the Mediterranean world from the Chinese one. She unravels in a clear and compelling way the complex threads that weave the history of great overland trade routes, which allowed the transmission of ideas and beliefs, techniques and works of art, helping to shape the civilizations that flourished along the way. She loves silk, its history, and all its paths to Europe. But the importance of Central Asia is not just a thing of the past, and the author discusses its significance in the modern world in cultural and geopolitical terms, including the implications of the most recent events taking place there.

For the armchair traveler or the adventurous trail blazer, this "piece de résistance" of Silk Road literature is guaranteed to satisfy. 57 full-color illustrations and 17 maps