When Asia Was the World

December 3, 2007
Gordon, a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Michigan, recalls Thomas Cahill's "Hinges of History" series in this accessible history-in-portraits. Covering "the thousand years from 500 to 1500, when Asia was an astonishing, connected, and creative place," Gordon bases each chapter on the actual memoir of someone who lived, worked and traveled there. Each story has its own unique appeal, the most compelling of which is probably Abraham bin Yiju's: a Jewish spice trader living in southwestern India around 1140 CE, his life proves dramatic and transient, and his letters poignant, as in this plea for news of relatives caught up in the Crusades: "No letter... detailing who died and who remained alive, has arrived. By God, write exact details and send your letters with reliable people to soothe my mind." It's a rare joy-and a slight shock-to find such rich evidence of lives lived 1,000 years ago; given the way time erases personal history, however, it makes sense that each man's story feels incomplete. Gordon lacks the vision and distinctive voice of a Cahill, but history buffs will find this book more than worthwhile.

Narrator Derek Perkins adds British charm to this history, which is based on extant books, manuscripts, and letters from approximately 500 to 1500 CE. While the West was languishing in darkness, Asia was thriving with commerce, scholarship, and a cosmopolitan sensibility. Buddhism and Islam were major influences, the former with strings of monastic centers and traveling monks, the latter with merchants crossing land and sea and carrying widely read philosophical treatises with them, both classical ones and more "modern" efforts such as those of Avicenna (Ibn Sina). It is hard to imagine a better narrator for a book like this--Perkins's voice is at once intimate, friendly, erudite, compelling, and impeccable. Even his pacing sounds thoughtful. D.R.W. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine