When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the "Riches of the "East"

I am a history teacher at the high school level. I really enjoyed this book both as a tool to better educate myself, and as a source of excerpts to utilize in class with my students. I have used various excerpts with my students to examine the variety and complexity of trade and social connections throughout parts of the Asian world historically. It is very good for this purpose, and I would highly recommned it to anyone with an interest in history, or anyone that is a history teacher.

I assign this book as summer reading for my AP World History class. It is a valuable eye opener to students who are used to seeing only the Western perspective on the world. It also provides a valuable view on the continuity of culture in the region and how that culture contrasts with and come into conflict with the Western view. Great book.

It's a pretty shallow look at each area, as you might expect, but the range of eras and kingdoms it covers is really good. Most books on Asia cover only Iran, China, or northern India. Did you know that the most populous city in the world (it would equate to a city 5 times as large as Shanghai today) was Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire in Cambodia? Did you know about the expansive maritime Indian empire that spanned south India and southeast Asia? Or the network of travel routes for Muslims and Buddhists throughout Central Asia? This book covers it all.

Very well written. Author is very well versed in his topic. Anyone interested in Asia can't go wrong with this book.

Very interesting. I appreciated the continuity of topics from a time and regional perspective.I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is even mildly curious about this topic.

This is an account of ten memoirs from parts of Asia from 500-1500AD. They are very thorough in their coverage. At times, I struggled to see the significance of some of the lesser figures and the anecdotes that Gordon recounted. Overall a great cursory look at a wide period of history across a large geographical era.

I have a passion for history, and found this book to be a very interesting read. I especially like how the author discusses the Africa-Asian world through specific notable people and their travels within the continents, focusing on their actions and relationships with the world in each period.

While Europe was muddling its way through the Dark Ages, Asia was making tremendous strides to advance learning, trade, and culture throughout Asia. The story is told by actual written descriptions from travelers about themselves and their experiences while traveling across Asia from 618 to 1500 ce. The reader finds wonderful insight into daily life at the time, and how specific travelers went about their lives while simultaneously laying the groundwork for the exchange of goods, ideas,and cultures from the Middle East to China.

What a well written book! A good overview for historians of other periods/places who want to get a sense of the book's area, and so accessible for the general reader. Its going to be my book to gift for the coming year.

This was a very well organized introduction into the history of the Asian world. For Westerners I think this book is an eye opener to the fact that the Asian world was far more sophisticated and advanced than we give it credit for, and far more advanced than Europe itself. I found each of the chapters intriguing and I particularly liked that the author consistently reminds us of similar instances from previous chapters. It is much easier to follow his thesis and strengthens the reader's understanding of the whole topic. This book is definitely worth a read.

Although I already know some deal about Asian history, this book, written in a near excessively lucid fashion, still left me satiated. The author is definitely erudite and has done a praiseworthy job in throwing light on a rather recondite perspective of world - the times when the West was in the shadows of the East.

Gives a real sense of peoples's lives in Asia when it dominated trade,and intellectual life. Lessons for today about East West relations.