Description
By Noah Brooks. In 1271, the young Venetian Marco Polo set out with his father and uncle on a journey that would carry them across Asia to the court of Kublai Khan. He would remain in the East for many years, travelling through distant lands and encountering great cities, unfamiliar customs, immense wealth, and wonders scarcely imaginable to the Europeans of his day.
First published in 1896, Noah Brooks’s The Story of Marco Polo follows the celebrated traveller from Venice across Asia and into the service of the Great Khan, and ultimately home again. Rather than simply retelling Marco Polo’s adventures, Brooks frequently allows him to speak for himself, weaving substantial passages from his account into a connected narrative enriched by historical and geographical explanation.
Drawing together biography, history, and Marco Polo’s own descriptions of the lands and peoples he encountered, Brooks brings to life an extraordinary journey across the medieval world and the remarkable era in which it took place.
This edition includes a new introduction and author biography, as well as additional illustrations and footnotes.
About the author: Noah Brooks (1830–1903) was an American journalist and author whose career took him from his native Maine to California, Civil War Washington, and the newspaper offices of New York. A friend of Abraham Lincoln and a frequent visitor to the White House, Brooks later drew upon his firsthand observations in several works about the president and his times.
In addition to his journalism, Brooks wrote widely on history, travel, and adventure, including a number of books for children. In The Story of Marco Polo, first published in 1896, he combined historical and geographical explanation with substantial extracts from Marco Polo’s account, drawing principally upon Colonel Henry Yule’s celebrated translation and scholarship. Brooks died in Pasadena, California, in 1903.
