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Appreciated this book

Revisado: 05-05-25

A book on the Darwinian approach to understanding human behavior and attitudes, in all their seemingly inconsistent aspects. I also learned more about Darwin's life and personal development. This book did not blow my socks off but I do recommend it and would consider another title by the same author.

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Solid content but repetitive and narrator could use improvement

Revisado: 01-12-25

I liked the summary of evidence and various working theories presented about the bronze age collapse. This book and author has been referenced in a couple other books and podcasts I've listened to so I thought I needed to read/listen to Cline's book finally. The author circled back and repeated his theme of "we don't know for sure what happened and we cannot point to one factor such as the Sea Peoples for a convenient primary cause of the bronze age collapse" too many times. I did appreciate the eveidence presented and his clear caution that other evidence points to another reason for xxx city destruction. I also was a bit annoyed with the narrator. I had it at 1.2x speed mostly but at the end 1.5x speed. He was really slow and very staccato and infused too much American style inflection with ups and downs and stress emphasis various words throughout each sentence.

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Great Book - thorough view on geopolitics of the world

Revisado: 09-04-24

This was a thorough and interesting analysis and prognostigation on the winners and losers of the decades to come in a world without the security arrangement that the American Order has provided since the end of WWII. Will continue to be a fan of Zeihan's books and videos and talks. His style is not the theory that you get from other IR authors and academics, but it is relevant analysis with strong implications for various countries.

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Learned more about the Norman catalyst on Europe

Revisado: 08-06-24

I learned more about the Norman catalyst on Europe and how powerful an impact this group had on the transformation of European geopolitics.

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Thanks for this podcast series on for Norman History

Revisado: 08-03-24

I am a world history buff that has watched a few documentaries and read a couple books surrounding the Crusades so I am very familiar with the Normans, but I haven't until now listened to a series specifically on the Normans and their origins. All of it rings a bell and matches with my mind's rough timeline but the author adds some details and expands on what I already know. Thanks. Will keep listening to more episodes.

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Great Book for History Buffs

Revisado: 07-09-24

Great book for history buffs.

Author keeps a consistent theme of emphasizing the relationship bwtween the two great empires as  "limited objectives and limited war". Author admits there are nearly zero sources for Parthian/Sassanid side and just a few from Roman side, but the book is still very informative to complement the reader's other history knowledge.

For the audio book, the first chapter of chronology lists of kings and emperors needs a pdf page supplement. This would be much better received than listening to an impossibly long list and would provide a visual spelling of names that are spoken throughout the rest of the book.

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Title is misleading but I did appreciate the book

Revisado: 05-19-24

I saw the title and many people who likely haven't read the book recommended it as part of my Central Asia tour a year ago. I have read other books focused on Central Asia and the Middle East and listened/watched many documentary series and lectures on the ancient/medieval/modern history, politics, and economics of the regions across Asia. Yes, this book did keep the "Silk Road" countries and territories as players in the telling of its world history narrative, but most of the book was still a Western Civilization based world history book with what I call "Middle Earth" as an added secondary player, rather than Middle Earth as a main focus with western countries as a secondary focus. I don't say that this telling is wrong, but it is not really what you would think when looking at the title. The title implies to the reader that the book is about the belt of territories through the Middle East, Central Asia, and on to China as if they have been ignored from world history and the Western Civilization story has been wrongly emphasized all too often. Yet this book did the same - Western Civilization history as the focus but with Asia and China included on the side. Keep this in mind and enjoy the book.

Additionally, I did think the author in the last couple of chapters got into pushing his one sided opinion of US foreign policy duplicity in its dealings in the Middle East. I don't necessarily disagree with the author's characterization of the US foreign policy being duplicitous and untrustworthy and foolhardy, but he did not bother including why the US did various things and was only presenting the side of Iran or Iraq or Pakistan etc. It was out of character for a historian author to give such an op-ed style damning account of events. Still, I did learn more about events surrounding Saddam which I appreciate.

If you really want a history book based regions in Middle Earth areas, I recommend The Lost Enlightenment by Starr or Destiny Disrupted by Ansary, although both of those books are limited in time frames, whereas this Silk Roads book by Frankopan is much longer in timespan and wider in world scope (although it did not and could not include everything of world history).

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Good analysis and clear themes

Revisado: 02-03-24

Author was repetitive occasionally as I found that he said particular things two or three times across the book, probably as evidence or an explanation of a different chapter and thus it was relevant to different topics within the book. He also said several obvious things which normally would make one think "not an insightful or worthwhile.book" but I think it was then backed up by data to confirm what we commonly know or observe in our world, so providing a data driven or science based explanation was the purpose. Overall, I very much appreciate the evolutionary perspective on mating strategies and this book did a good job. Recommend.

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Like the author and themes

Revisado: 01-07-24

I didn't get much out of the book that I hadn't heard out of the author's mouth on a couple of podcasts. Glad it was only a 6 hour audio book (5 hours at 1.25 speed) and she didn't repeat stuff more than necessary. I do agree with her points and analysis, and it was interesting enough to pause the book and jot some notes, but as she said herself, nothing is ground breaking. She says a lot of stuff that I already thought was obvious but she actually had some data studies to back it up so that was good. And she had some pithy phrases and more eloquent ways of expressing things than I could have come up with. I'll give the book a 4 out of 5. I recommend it but it wasn't a "wow, enlightening" book for me.

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Simple message, underwhelming, long boring stories

Revisado: 12-19-23

I had high hopes for this book because I have heard author David Brooks a couple of times on podcasts. However, the book was lame. It was a basic message of "be nice and listen to other people's perspective" and could have been a 1 hour audio book but was instead a 7.5 hour audio book (5.5 hours at increased speed). I found myself yelling at the speaker system while driving saying things like "Why are you telling me this?! I do not want to hear another story!" The author reads at length from various memoirs and relays all the irrelevant details. If I wanted to read a memoir about the guy who survived the Sri Lanka tsunami, I would go do that. I don't want to hear about the random strangers he met. One was 23 years old with brown hair from Scotland on vacation with her two friends and was standing beside a yellow building next to the book shop...I don't care. Tell me the guy survived a brutal tsunami miraculously and lost a family member and therefore suffered trauma. I got it. Done. The same for the other tens of thousands of people. I would say he wasn't being fair to the 140,000+ people who died in Indonesia because he didn't even mention them. 1 minute is enough, not 20 minutes of on and on and on. Just tell me the point. I recall part of the end was useful when he talks about personality traits relating to culture that is conditioned over time....standard cited sociology examples being western individualist societies vs collectivist East Asian societies. He confirmed what I have read in other places, as well as experienced while living in Asia. Then he goes back into droning on and on about examples of how someone saw deeply into someone else while I wish he would just finish the book. 2 star out of 5.

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