By the shear scope of the undertaking at hand, author
Frank McLynn started out with a task that even an army of researchers and
writers could not have powered through writing a definitive biography of a man
who has been labeled everything from the greatest conqueror in history to the
worst, most evil murderer of all-time, with some crediting him with tens of
millions of deaths.
The hundred pages of endnotes clearly illustrates the
efforts that McLynn put forth in penning Genghis
Khan – His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy. Practically right from birth,
Genghis Khan was surrounded by a level of violence that he carried into
adulthood as he led a band of nomadic warriors into a blood soaked, brutal and
merciless rein over a huge geographic territory.
McLynn tries mightily to synthesize what amount to four
decades of research and scholarly opinion on how Khan overcame his lack of
masterful intellect by blunt force to rule with an iron fist. While certainly a
yeoman’s effort, the voluminous nature of the subject is hard to encapsulate in
one book.
On
the Trail of Genghis Khan – An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads –
Tim Cope (Bloomsbury)
What would motivate a seemingly level-headed,
intelligent, then 24 year old man to put his basically normal life, whatever
that might be these days, and drop himself headlong into what can only be
described as a foolhardy adventure across treacherous and life-threatening
terrain on his own?
Just to further make the case; we are talking about a
self-admitted novice horseman, and novice may give him too much credit, who
want to set off on a self-guided trek across 6000 miles of the most
inhospitable trails, through some of the most brutal weather extremes on what
he labeled the Trail of Genghis Khan.
It is that adventure tail that Tim Cope not only
undertook, but he details in On the Trail of Genghis Khan – An Epic
Journey Through the Land of the Nomads. It is nearly impossible to
comprehend the distance and the extremes that Cope subjected himself to during
this under-funded, flying by the seat of his pants journey that took up three
years of his young life to complete.
Cope focuses not so much on the extremis nature of the
trek, but more so on the kindness of strangers he encountered; more than one of
who may have saved his life. With the nearly insurmountable odds stacked
against him, this is a tale of high adventure, survival and triumph and isn’t
that reason enough to undertake the journey?
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