About this item
The Mongol queens of the thirteenth century ruled the largest empire the world has ever known. Yet sometime near the end of the century, censors cut a section from The Secret History of the Mongols, leaving a single tantalizing quote from Genghis Khan: “Let us reward our female offspring.” Only this hint of a father’s legacy for his daughters remained of a much larger story. The queens of the Silk Route turned their father’s conquests into the world’s first truly international empire, fostering trade, education, and religion throughout their territories and creating an economic system that stretched from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. Outlandish stories of these powerful queens trickled out of the Empire, shocking the citizens of Europe and and the Islamic world.
About the Author
Jack Weatherford is the New York Times bestselling author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, which sold over 300,000 copies and has been optioned by Wolf Films (producer of Law and Order) , Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed The world, his first national bestseller, The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, optioned by The Weinstein Company, and The History of Money, among other acclaimed books that have been published in more than twenty-five languages. In 2006 he spoke at the United Nations to honor the 800th anniversary of the founding of the Mongol nation by Genghis Khan. In 2007 President Enkhbayar of Mongolia awarded him Mongolia's highest honor for military or civilian service. Although the original Spanish edition of Indian Givers was banned in some parts of Latin America, nearly a quarter of a century later Bolivia honored him for this work on the indigenous people of the Americas. A specialist in tribal peoples, he taught for twenty-nine years at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he held the DeWitt Wallace Distinguished Chair of Anthropology. He graduated from high school with Walker Pearce, to whom he was married from 1970 until her death in 2013. He now divides his time between their home in Charleston, South Carolina and Tur Hurah on the Bogd Khan Mountain in Mongolia.
