Every society produces its own cultural conceits, a set of lies and delusions about itself that thrive in the face of all contrary evidence.
The Greeks who rhapsodized about democracy in their rhetoric rarely created democratic institutions. A few cities such as Athens occasionally attempted a system vaguely akin to democracy for a few yea...
The first key to leadership was self-control, particularly the mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild lion and anger, which was more difficult to def...
Only a few details have survived from Temujin’s earliest childhood, and they do not suggest that he was highly valued by his father. His father once accidentally left him behind when they moved to ano...
The recipes of the dishes served Khubilai Khan still survive. They include a variety of foods but maintain the traditional Mongol emphasis on meat and dairy products. The members of the Mongol court a...
By the time the settlers and pioneers of America reached the West Coast, they had gone through many dramatic landscapes, but nothing quite prepared them for the size of the California redwoods. The gi...
Fame is everlasting!
In conquering their empire, not only had the Mongols revolutionized warfare, they also created the nucleus of a universal culture and world system. This new global culture continued to grow long after...
Using this novel method, doctors could treat female patients without violating the honor of her family.
The attack was designed as a show of overwhelming strength for which the audience was not the already conquered people of Bukhara, but the still distant army and people of Samarkand, the next city on...
In probably the first law of its kind anywhere in the world, Genghis Khan decreed complete and total religious freedom for everyone.
Highest mountain always had the title of khan. Rivers and lakes that never ran dry bore the title khatun,
The first key to leadership is self-control.
Genghis Khan had well-founded and unshakable faith in his daughters and the other women around him. Whoever can keep a house in order, he said, can keep a territory in order. As the military campaigns...
Despite all the Indian ruins and the abiding native communities, plaques around Lake Itasca proclaim that Henry Rowe Schoolcraft discovered the source of the Mississippi River in July 1832. For the In...
Without the vision of a goal, a man cannot manage his own life, much less the lives of others, he
Even in this high-tech age, the low-tech plant continues to be the key to nutrition and health.
Called aral, island, in Mongolian.
Genghis Khan’s ability to manipulate people and technology represented the experienced knowledge of more than four decades of nearly constant warfare. At no single, crucial moment in his life did he s...
The great actors of history cannot be neatly tucked between the covers of a book and filed away like so many pressed botanical specimens.