The Silk Roads: An Illustrated History of the World

This volume provides a conceptual view of world history by way of the silk roads. Equal parts symbolic and literal, the roads trace the flow and exchange of ideas, culture, and commerce. Packer’s illustrations include maps as well as mythical and abstract representations of objects, armies, and individuals from antiquity to modern day. Frankopan explores the expansion of religious beliefs in the ancient world and discusses how “the Road to New Worlds” resulted in the spread of European ideals and technology to North America (and in “astonishing cruelty” toward indigenous people). Later chapters focus on the roads to world wars, Middle Eastern conflicts, the civil rights movement, and the fall of apartheid. The past need not be seen as linear or chronological, Frankopan conveys, but rather as an intersection of ever-evolving human experiences. Ages 10–14. (Nov.)