– Customer review on 15/03/2009

I was not expecting to believe all the claims in this book, though I was intrigued by the possibility of unexpected new findings about the age of exploration. The Europeans were clearly not the first to sail great distances and discover new lands. You would have once been dismissed as a crackpot for claiming that the Vikings reached the Americas 500 years before Columbus, but that's now accepted history. There's also plenty of proof that the Chinese were regularly sailing to the Middle East and East Africa centuries before Europeans could even leave their own shores. But this book, claiming that the Chinese momentously and influentially circumnavigated the globe in 1421-1423, is a disaster of hyperbolic claims and selective interpretation of historical evidence. That's because Gavin Menzies started with an idea, compiled evidence that seemed to point in the right direction, and convinced himself that he was finding mindboggling breakthroughs. But there is little reason for us to be as convinced as he is. You can see plenty of other reviews (here and elsewhere) debunking the many, many research errors committed by Menzies. Most of these criticisms are more believable to me than Menzies' assertions. On a higher level I'll add that Menzies is an unabashed member of the "incredible coincidence" school of history. In just a couple of examples, among multitudes, he claims that the presence of Asiatic birds in South America means "the conclusion is inescapable" of visiting Chinese sailors; or an ice-free depiction of Antarctica on a map "confirm[s]" that the Chinese were there during a January. Menzies also unquestioningly accepts Chinese court histories as accurate, without considering the possibility that they may be distorted by embellishments or state propaganda. The same goes for his faithful belief in the accuracy of folklore and oral histories. An especially damaging methodological error is that Menzies doesn't question the alleged years of origin of any of the maps he examines, which are of course mindblowingly and impossibly old. The Piri Reis map is the most important example, as there is much scholarly dispute (unacknowledged by Menzies) over whether this map really dates from 1513. There are surely many mysteries about the age of exploration, as compelling pieces of physical and anecdotal evidence give us plenty of reason to doubt accepted histories. But what makes this book such a failure is that Menzies has one grand answer for all unsolved mysteries - a single momentous Chinese expedition. Some other reviewers have made telling comparisons to the farcical "Chariots of the Gods" which does the same thing, except with spaceships and aliens.

– Customer review on 29/08/2006

A very comprehensive book that can take some digesting. Not sure if that is due to the fact that this book is in effect re-writing histoy as we now know it, or just the sheer volume of information to wade through to come to the same conclusions as the author.

Some of it is a bit far stretched, but the evidence seems to be there to support it. The jury is still out on the validity of this book and the fact that it changes absolutely everything we now believe is history, it is a difficult read indeed.

Needs to be read for own personal judgement on history.

– Customer review on 23/08/2006

A fascinating read and convincingly written! This book truly captures the imagination because it is challenges so many of our assumptions about history and the role of Western cultures within it. It's hard to know what is more startling - the notion that China could have carried out such voyages of discovery into the world beyond its borders at that time or the fact they decided they didn't want any of it!