As Marco Polo (1254-1324) returned home across the Indian Ocean, after years in the service of Genghis Khan, he picked up a fabulous array of stories from sailors and merchants, about the peoples of the region, some reliable, some wholly implausible, but all fascinating. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries - but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.
- ISBN10 0141032030
- ISBN13 9780141032030
- Publish Date 31 May 2007 (first published 1 February 2007)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 11 June 2015
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
- Imprint Penguin Classics
- Edition US ed
- Format Paperback (A-Format (178x111 mm))
- Pages 96
- Language English