Storm from the Steppe

Out of the felt tents of the Mongolian steppe, in a single lifetime, one man forged the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world. Abandoned as a boy to starve in the snow, betrayed by his own clan, the orphan Temujin clawed his way to mastery of the warring tribes of the grass — and then turned the horse-archers of the steppe into a war machine that shattered the walls of China, drowned the cities of Central Asia, and rode to the gates of Europe and the heart of Islam. This is the whole sweep of that astonishing story: the rise of Genghis Khan and the empire he built; the law, the loyalty, and the terror that held it together; the sack of Baghdad and the burning of Kiev; the divine wind that saved Japan and the Mamluks who halted the Mongols at Ain Jalut; the splendor of Kublai Khan and the connected world of the Pax Mongolica; and the long afterlife of an empire that rose from nothing and changed the world forever. Vivid, sweeping, and honest about what we know and what the chroniclers only imagined, this is popular history at its most gripping — the unforgettable tale of the conqueror who ended the wars of the steppe and unleashed war upon the world.