The author of this revisionist history of Genghis Khan is Jack Weatherford, a professor of anthropology at Macalaster College in St. Paul, MN.

A major inspiration for the new research in his book was the translation in the 1970s of the so-called Secret History of the Mongols, an anonymous 13th century chronicle of Genghis Khan’s life written in a code using Chinese characters to represent Mongolian sounds; another was the opening of Mongolia in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Working with Mongolian scholars, visiting the remote places mentioned in the Secret History, Weatherford sought to understand some of the mysteries of this curious document and reinterpret Mongolian achievements in shaping modern civilization.

The result of Weatherford’s eight-year quest is part travelogue, part epic narrative and part speculative musing that has definitely raised a few eyebrows among Mongolian scholars.

He disputes our notions of Genghis Khan as a brute. By his telling, the great general was a secular but faithful Christian, a progressive free trader, a regretful failed parent, and a loving if polygamous husband.

Weatherford comes to the conclusion that “in nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege.”

He even has the Mongols rather than the Greeks and Romans as the models for the Renaissance in Europe.

Kirkus Reviews concludes: “Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongol’s reputation, and it takes wonderful learned detours….Well written and full of surprises.”