Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu

A first-class storyteller, Lawrence Bergreen has created the most authoritative account to date of Marco Polo's fascinating travels, masterfully blending the genres of scholarly research, biography, and travel diary. An incredible odyssey that encompasses all the fantastic circumstances of the life of a scion of a wealthy merchant family — from youth in Venice and travels in Asia to his return to Europe and the writing of his book, the history of its dissemination and interpretation is no less dramatic than the path of its author — is presented in carefully chosen and vivid details. Relying on solid primary sources and materials from his own travels along Polo's route in China and Mongolia, Bergreen describes the life of a man who expanded the boundaries of knowledge and imagination for his contemporaries, and analyzes the legends about him, separating truth from fiction, and history from myth. The book has undergone numerous reprints and has been translated into 14 languages.
«Polo eventually acquired the status of a mediator in the exchange of cultural values, becoming one of those rare individuals whose extensive experience allows them to embody and convey the spirit of the era to subsequent generations. His culture was that of a traveler and trader and included numerous subcultures: Mongolian, Chinese, Indian, and Asian tribes. His vision extended from Armenia to Zanzibar. His perception of these cultures, especially that of China, remained the main source of information about them for Europeans until the 19th century. The world that Marco Polo explored has long gone, but some of its features are remarkably modern».
Lawrence Bergreen