Marco Polo
From Venice to Xanadu
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Marco Polo
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Narrated by:
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Paul Boehmer
About this listen
As the most celebrated European to explore Asia, Marco Polo was the original global traveler and the earliest bridge between East and West. A universal icon of adventure and discovery, he has inspired six centuries of popular fascination and spurious mythology. Now, from acclaimed author Laurence Bergreen, comes the first fully authoritative biography of one of the most enchanting figures in world history. In this masterly work, Marco Polo’s incredible odyssey - along the Silk Road and through all the fantastic circumstances of his life - is chronicled in sumptuous and illuminating detail.
Drawing on original sources in more than half a dozen languages, and his own travels along Polo’s route in China and Mongolia, Bergreen explores the lingering controversies surrounding Polo’s legend, settling age-old questions and testing others for significance.
Synthesizing history, biography, and travelogue, this is a timely chronicle of a man who extended the boundaries of human knowledge and imagination. Destined to be the definitive account of its subject for decades to come, Marco Polo takes us on a journey to the limits of history - and beyond.
©2007 Laurence Bergreen (P)2007 Books on TapeListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"As enthralling as a rollicking travel journal." (New York Times Book Review)
"Mesmerizing...This is lively history that is richly detailed and destined to be the definitive account of Marco Polo and his adventures for decades to come." (Tucson Citizen)
"With his polished, authoritative storytelling, Bergreen makes the world of Marco Polo very pertinent." (Entertainment Weekly)
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Fascinating history
- By Anonymous User on 12-29-18
By: Jack Weatherford
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Columbus
- The Four Voyages
- By: Laurence Bergreen
- Narrated by: Tim Jerome
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 215
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Story4 out of 5 stars 177
From the author of the Magellan biography, Over the Edge of the World, a mesmerizing new account of the great explorer. Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Very Petty and frankly flat out dishonest
- By Anonymous User on 02-16-21
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Persians
- The Age of the Great Kings
- By: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
- Narrated by: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
- Length: 18 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 163
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 146
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 148
The Achaemenid Persian kings ruled over the largest empire of antiquity, stretching from Libya to the steppes of Asia and from Ethiopia to Pakistan. In Persians, historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells the epic story of this dynasty and the world it ruled. Drawing on Iranian inscriptions, cuneiform tablets, art, and archaeology, he shows how the Achaemenid Persian Empire was the world’s first superpower—one built, despite its imperial ambition, on cooperation and tolerance. This is the definitive history of the Achaemenid dynasty and its legacies in modern-day Iran.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good History and Historiography
- By Anonymous User on 04-19-22
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Cleopatra
- A Life
- By: Stacy Schiff
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,605
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,105
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,116
Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Approach this book with caution
- By Anonymous User on 12-02-10
By: Stacy Schiff
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Taj Mahal
- Passion and Genius at the Heart of the Moghul Empire
- By: Diana Preston, Michael Preston
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 152
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 118
While Galileo was suffering under house arrest at the hands of Pope Urban VIII, the 30 Years War was ruining Europe, and the Pilgrims were struggling to survive in the New World, work began on what would become one of the Seven Wonders of the World: the Taj Mahal. Built by the Moghul emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial to his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, its flawless symmetry and gleaming presence have for centuries dazzled all who have seen it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A broad perspective
- By Anonymous User on 11-01-09
By: Diana Preston, and others
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The Vikings
- A History
- By: Robert Ferguson
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 14 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 155
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 136
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Story4 out of 5 stars 136
From Robert Ferguson comes a comprehensive and thrilling history, based on the latest scholarship, that offers the definitive portrait of the Vikings.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good Historical Overview
- By Anonymous User on 04-25-12
By: Robert Ferguson
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Over the Edge of the World
- Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
- By: Laurence Bergreen
- Narrated by: Laurence Bergreen
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 854
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 639
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 639
In 1519 Magellan and his fleet of five ships set sail from Seville, Spain, to discover a water route to the fabled Spice Islands in Indonesia, where the most sought-after commodities (cloves, pepper, and nutmeg) flourished. Three years later, a handful of survivors returned with an abundance of spices from their intended destination, but with just one ship carrying 18 emaciated men. During their remarkable voyage around the world the crew endured starvation, disease, mutiny, and torture. Many men died, including Magellan, who was violently killed in a fierce battle.
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2 out of 5 stars
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The Reading IS an Issue
- By Anonymous User on 12-26-05
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Koh-i-Noor
- The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond
- By: Anita Anand, William Dalrymple
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 115
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 114
On 29 March 1849, the 10-year-old Maharajah of the Punjab was ushered into the magnificent Mirrored Hall at the centre of the great Fort in Lahore. There, in a public ceremony, the frightened but dignified child handed over to the British East India Company in a formal act of submission not only swathes of the richest land in India but also arguably the single most valuable object in the subcontinent: the celebrated Koh-i-Noor diamond. The Mountain of Light.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating
- By Anonymous User on 07-08-17
By: Anita Anand, and others
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Conquistadors
- By: Michael Wood
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 599
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 512
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 506
Following in the footsteps of the greatest Spanish adventurers, Michael Wood retraces the path of the conquistadors from Amazonia to Lake Titicaca, and from the deserts of North Mexico to the heights of Machu Picchu. As he travels the same routes as Hernán Cortés, Francisco, and Gonzalo Pizarro, Wood describes the dramatic events that accompanied the epic sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Horrific anti-European bias
- By Anonymous User on 08-30-20
By: Michael Wood
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Daughters of the Sun
- Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire
- By: Ira Mukhoty
- Narrated by: Shernaz Patel
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
In 1526, when the nomadic Timurid warrior-scholar Babur rode into Hindustan, his wives, sisters, daughters, aunts and distant female relatives travelled with him. These women would help establish a dynasty and empire that would rule India for the next 200 years and become a byword for opulence and grandeur. In Daughters of the Sun, we meet remarkable characters like Khanzada Begum who, at 65, rode on horseback through 750 kilometres of icy passes and unforgiving terrain to parley on behalf of her nephew, Humayun....
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4 out of 5 stars
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Repetitive Content
- By Anonymous User on 07-18-22
By: Ira Mukhoty
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A Little History of the World
- By: E. H. Gombrich
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4,055
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,402
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,388
E. H. Gombrich's world history, an international best seller now available in English for the first time, is a text dominated not by dates and facts but by the sweep of experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements, and an acute witness to its frailties.
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5 out of 5 stars
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an enlightening book; very well read
- By Anonymous User on 06-03-06
By: E. H. Gombrich
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Our Oriental Heritage
- The Story of Civilization, Volume 1
- By: Will Durant
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 50 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,316
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,172
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,164
The first volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I chronicles the early history of Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful
- By Anonymous User on 11-30-13
By: Will Durant
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Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
- Why the Greeks Matter
- By: Thomas Cahill
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 338
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Story4 out of 5 stars 155
Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Super super
- By Anonymous User on 12-28-03
By: Thomas Cahill
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Lords of the Horizons
- A History of the Ottoman Empire
- By: Jason Goodwin
- Narrated by: Grahame Edwards
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 63
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4 out of 5 stars 57
The Ottoman Empire has long exerted a strong pull on Western minds and hearts. For over 600 years the empire swelled and declined, rising from a dusty fiefdom in the foothills of Anatolia to a power which ruled over the Danube and the Euphrates with the richest court in Europe. But its decline was prodigious, protracted and total.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good introduction to the Ottomans, bad narration
- By Anonymous User on 06-06-18
By: Jason Goodwin
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América
- The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1493-1898
- By: Robert Goodwin
- Narrated by: Thom Rivera
- Length: 20 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 99
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 98
At the conclusion of the American Revolution, half the modern United States was part of the vast Spanish Empire. The year after Columbus' great voyage of discovery, in 1492, he claimed Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands for Spain. For the next 300 years, thousands of proud Spanish conquistadors and their largely forgotten Mexican allies went in search of glory and riches from Florida to California. Many died; few triumphed. Some were cruel; some were curious; some were kind. Missionaries and priests yearned to harvest Indian souls for God through baptism and Christian teaching.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A Narration That is Difficult to Follow
- By Anonymous User on 05-24-19
By: Robert Goodwin
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4 out of 5 stars
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An educational experience.
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The Travels of Marco Polo
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 62
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