A Concise History of the Rise and Fall of the Mongolian Empire

A Concise History of the Rise and Fall of the Mongolian Empire: The Building of an Empire
By Henry Harrison Epps Jr.
Published in December 2013
162 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 3/5

I like it when books straightforwardly contain all of the information as advertised. This book is just that: a concise history of the rise and fall of the Mongolian empire.

Much of the text is copy pasted from Wikipedia, which is fine by me because the audiobook is well produced. Wikipedia is clearly written and concise. The only problem is that it doesn’t come as an audiobook, which this book does.

This book doesn’t do a great job of explaining the root causes of Mongol history, analysing the sources, or going into detail. What it does is highlight the major events of Mongol history, from the rise of Chingghis Khan until the end of the reign of his grandson Kublai Khan. It is clear and dry, simple and straightforward, short and concise.

I like to start my historical deep dives with survey histories to simply understand the relationship between different events over time. This book accomplished that purpose, and nothing more.

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