By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean
The Birth of Eurasia
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By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean
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Narrated by:
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Jennifer M. Dixon
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By:
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Barry Cunliffe
About this listen
By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean is nothing less than the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today. Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, it is a tale covering more than 10,000 years, from the origins of farming around 9000 BC to the expansion of the Mongols in the 13th century AD.
An unashamedly "big history", it charts the development of European, Near Eastern, and Chinese civilizations and the growing links between them by way of the Indian Ocean, the Silk Roads, and the great steppe corridor (which crucially allowed horse riders to travel from Mongolia to the Great Hungarian Plain within a year). Along the way, it is also the story of the rise and fall of empires, the development of maritime trade, and the shattering impact of predatory nomads on their urban neighbors.
Above all, as this immense historical panorama unfolds, we begin to see in clearer focus those basic underlying factors - the acquisitive nature of humanity, the differing environments in which people live, and the dislocating effect of even slight climatic variation - that have driven change throughout the ages and that help us better understand our world today.
©2015 Barry Cunliffe (P)2021 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
Spoilt by narrator
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The trouble is that there's a thesis here - laid out neatly in the final chapter - that gets lost with all the sidetracks. To make sense of the flow of people and goods through Central Asia, do we really need diversions about the rise of Charlemagne? And if the rise of major political powers at either end of the trade routes - Rome, China, Persia, Islam - was part of the driving force, why so little attention paid to India, South East Asia, or even Egypt? And - really - did half the book need to be devoted to pre-history, when all there is to go on is sparse archaeological evidence and lots of repetitive speculation?
All this is made more frustrating by the narrator's hectoring tone - sounds like she should be standing at the front of an old-fashioned classroom with a cane in hand - and bizarre choices of pronunciation and emphasis. I've never previously encountered anyone refer to years as if they were just numbers (e.g. 1202 as "one thousand two hundred and two" rather than "twelve oh two". I'll be avoiding her in future.
Vast scope, doesn't quite deliver
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Poor narration
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