Perspective

Jack Weatherford is the author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World and is the Dewitt Wallace Professor of Anthropology at Macalester College. He uses three major non-Western texts, including the Secret History of the Mongols. If Weatherford has a bias, it is his express desire to wholly rehabilitate the image of the Mongol Empire in the eyes of Western historians and the culture of the West generally. Weatherford considers Genghis Khan to be one of history's great and noble kings who, only with the Enlightenment, was converted into a savage barbarian. The book is deeply revisionary and is highly friendly to the Mongols. Weather emphasizes Genghis Khan's difficult youth and the life lessons he used to transform the world. He pains Khan as a deeply pious man, devoted to loyalty, fairness and patronizing science and the free exchange of ideas.

Weatherford's bias sometimes seems...