Emperor of the Seas
Kublai Khan and the Making of China
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Emperor of the Seas
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Narrated by:
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Mark Elstob
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By:
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Jack Weatherford
About this listen
Bloomsbury presents… Emperor of the Seas: Kublai Khan and the Making of China by Jack Weatherford, read by Mark Elstob
Control the sea, and you control everything...a gripping tale of naval warfare, dynastic rivalry, and technical innovation, from the author of the classic work Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.
Genghis Khan built a formidable land empire, but he never crossed the sea. Yet by the time his grandson Kublai Khan had defeated the last vestiges of the Song empire and established the Yuan dynasty in 1279, the Mongols controlled the most powerful navy in the world. How did a nomad come to conquer China and master the sea? Based on ten years of research and a lifetime of immersion in Mongol culture and tradition, Emperor of the Seas brings this little-known story vibrantly to life.
Kublai Khan is one of history’s most fascinating characters. He brought Islamic mathematicians to his court, where they invented modern cartography and celestial measurement. He transformed the world’s largest land mass into a unified, diverse and economically progressive empire, introducing paper money. And, after bitter early setbacks, he transformed China into an outward looking sea-faring empire.
By the end of his reign, the Chinese were building and supplying remarkable ships to transport men, grain, and weapons over vast distances, of a size and dexterity that would be inconceivable in Europe for hundreds of years. Khan had come to a brilliant realization: control the sea, and you control everything.
A master storyteller with an unparalleled grasp of Mongol sources, Jack Weatherford shows how Chinese naval hegemony changed the world forever - revolutionizing world commerce and transforming tastes as far away as England and France.
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 4
Saladin remains one of the most iconic figures of his age. As the man who united the Arabs and saved Islam from Christian crusaders in the twelfth century, he is the Islamic world's preeminent hero. A ruthless defender of his faith and leader, he possessed qualities that won admiration from his Christian foes.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Honest Information
- By James Murray on 01-16-25
By: John Man
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Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
- By: Jack Weatherford
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Jack Weatherford
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 20,130
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 16,650
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 16,646
The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Golden Horde/Platinum Listen
- By Cynthia on 12-11-13
By: Jack Weatherford
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Rivers of Gold
- The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan
- By: Hugh Thomas
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 27 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 11
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 9
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 9
From one of the greatest historians of the Spanish world, here is a fresh and fascinating account of Spain's early conquests in the Americas. Hugh Thomas shows Spain at the dawn of the sixteenth century as a world power on the brink of greatness. For Spain and for the world, the decision to send Christopher Columbus west was epochal—the dividing line between the medieval and the modern.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great sweep of history from Spain to America
- By Anonymous User on 12-31-24
By: Hugh Thomas
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The Mongol Storm
- Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East
- By: Nicholas Morton
- Narrated by: Nick Biadon
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 16
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 15
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 15
For centuries, the Crusades have been central to the story of the medieval Near East, but these religious wars are only part of the region's complex history. As The Mongol Storm reveals, during the same era the Near East was utterly remade by another series of wars: the Mongol invasions. In a single generation, the Mongols conquered vast swaths of the Near East and upended the region's geopolitics. This is the definitive history of the Mongol assault on the Near East and its enduring global consequences.
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4 out of 5 stars
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History explained and experienced
- By Bob H on 03-20-25
By: Nicholas Morton
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Spice
- The 16th-Century Contest That Shaped the Modern World
- By: Roger Crowley
- Narrated by: Samuel Roukin
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
Spices drove the early modern world economy, and for Europeans they represented riches on an unprecedented scale. Cloves and nutmeg could reach Europe only via a complex web of trade routes, and for decades Spanish and Portuguese explorers competed to find their elusive source. But when the Portuguese finally reached the spice islands of the Moluccas in 1511, they set in motion a fierce competition for control.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Spice or Megellan?
- By BarbieAlaska on 06-21-24
By: Roger Crowley
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The Horde
- How the Mongols Changed the World
- By: Marie Favereau
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
Favereau takes us inside one of the most powerful sources of cross-border integration in world history. The Horde was the central node in the Eurasian commercial boom of the 13th and 14th centuries and was a conduit for exchanges across thousands of miles. Its unique political regime - a complex power-sharing arrangement among the khan and the nobility - rewarded skillful administrators and diplomats and fostered an economic order that was mobile, organized, and innovative.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Golden Horde complete history, well done
- By Amazon Customer on 03-10-22
By: Marie Favereau
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The Water Margin
- Outlaws of the Marsh
- By: Shi Naian, J. H. Jackson - translator, Edwin Lowe - translator
- Narrated by: Jonathan Booth
- Length: 33 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
The Water Margin is one of the most popular classics of early Chinese literature. It tells the vigorous story of 108 characters who, falling foul of the established state authorities, are forced to become outlaws. They form a bandit community in Liangshan Marsh, becoming such a formidable force in their own right that they threaten the power of government itself.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Exciting! Each story entwined with one another!
- By Kananai on 04-03-24
By: Shi Naian, and others
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Battle for the Island Kingdom
- England's Destiny 1000-1066
- By: Don Hollway
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 15 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 16
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 16
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Story5 out of 5 stars 16
In a saga reminiscent of Game of Thrones and The Last Kingdom, Battle for the Island Kingdom reveals the life-and-death struggle for power which changed the course of history. The six decades leading up to 1066 were defined by bloody wars and intrigues, in which three peoples vied for supremacy over the island kingdom. In this epic retelling, Don Hollway (The Last Viking) recounts the clashes of Vikings, Anglo-Saxons and Normans, their warlords and their conniving queens.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderfully told
- By Matt on 08-03-24
By: Don Hollway
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India
- A History
- By: John Keay
- Narrated by: Mike Fraser
- Length: 33 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 6
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 6
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Story4 out of 5 stars 6
Fully revised with forty thousand new words that take the listener up to present-day India, John Keay’s India: A History spans five millennia in a sweeping narrative that tells the story of the peoples of the subcontinent, from their ancient beginnings in the valley of the Indus to the events in the region today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Best book on India I've ever read or listened to
- By djay on 10-03-24
By: John Keay
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The Great Transformation
- China’s Road from Revolution to Reform
- By: Chen Jian, Odd Arne Westad
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 21
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 20
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Story5 out of 5 stars 20
Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian chronicle how an impoverished and terrorized China experienced radical political changes in the long 1970s and how ordinary people broke free from the beliefs that had shaped their lives during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. These changes, and the unprecedented and sustained economic growth that followed, transformed China and the world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent history but the narration’s mispronunciation takes away from the story
- By Anonymous User on 04-19-25
By: Chen Jian, and others
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Conquistadors and Aztecs
- A History of the Fall of Tenochtitlan
- By: Stefan Rinke, Christopher Reid
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 22
Written by a leading historian of Latin America, Conquistadors and Aztecs offers a timely portrayal of the fall of Tenochtitlan and the founding of an empire that would last for centuries.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Gold and Death
- By Rebecca Hill on 09-13-23
By: Stefan Rinke, and others
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The Path to Blitzkrieg
- Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920 - 1939
- By: Robert M. Citino
- Narrated by: Mark Ashby
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
In the wake of World War I, the German army lay in ruins - defeated in the war, sundered by domestic upheaval, and punished by the Treaty of Versailles. A mere 20 years later, Germany possessed one of the finest military machines in the world, capable of launching a stunning blitzkrieg attack against Poland in 1939. Well-known military historian Robert M. Citino shows how Germany accomplished this astonishing reversal and developed the doctrine, tactics, and technologies that its military would use to devastating effect in World War II.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Thorough review of Reichswehr in Weimar years
- By Rodney W. Schmisseur on 06-19-24
By: Robert M. Citino
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Agincourt
- Battle of the Scarred King
- By: Dr Michael Livingston, Bernard Cornwell - foreword
- Narrated by: Rupert Farley
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 24
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 19
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Story5 out of 5 stars 19
King Henry V’s victory over the French armies at Agincourt on 25 October 1415 is unquestionably one of the most famous battles in history. From Shakespeare’s ‘band of brothers’ speech to its appearances in numerous films, Agincourt rightfully has a place among a handful of conflicts whose names are immediately recognized around the world. Agincourt provides a new look at this battle. Mike Livingston goes back to the original sources, including the French battle plan that still survives today, to give a new interpretation, one that challenges the traditional site of the battlefield itself.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well researched history
- By J. Johansson on 05-22-25
By: Dr Michael Livingston, and others
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The King in the North
- The Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria
- By: Max Adams
- Narrated by: Hamilton McLeod
- Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 15
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 13
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Story4 out of 5 stars 13
A charismatic leader, a warrior whose prowess in battle earned him the epithet Whiteblade, an exiled prince who returned to claim his birthright, the inspiration for Tolkein's Aragorn: Oswald of Northumbria was the first great English monarch, yet today this legendary figure is all but forgotten. In this panoramic portrait of Dark Age Britain, archaeologist and biographer Max Adams returns the king in the North to his rightful place in history.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating
- By Wendy on 02-14-25
By: Max Adams
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