1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Author: Gavin Menzies List Price: £20.00 Our Price: £9.00 You Save: £11.00 (55%) Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours  |
|
 | Product Details: Hardcover 384 pages Release Date: 01 July 2008 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd ISBN: 0007269374 Rating:   Sales Rank: 6307 | | Look for similar books by subject:
| | Customers who bought this item also bought:
| | Customer Reviews: This gives history a bad name (24 December 2008)This is the kind of history book that really should be consigned to the fiction shelves - along with all those bonkers books about the Knights Templars, Holy Grail etc etc. What makes me angry is that Mr Menzies ruins a proper appreciation of Chinese culture and civilisation. Yes at the time the huge Chinese fleets WERE more sophisticated than their hesitant Portuguese or Spanish counter-parts. I happen to believe it is important for our history books not to be so western-centric and to acknowledge the very real debt of learning to Arab and other cultures - for instance without the Arab scholars in al-Andalus much of Greek learning would have vanished from Christian western Europe. But this book undermines all this by its nonsensical arguments. It would be lovely to think such Chinese fleets did sail into the Atlantic or across the Pacific to North America. Unfortunately it didn't happen - and no amount of dark mutterings about the 'historical establishment's' role in 'covering things up' will make it so. This is the kind of book for you, only if you are a committed conspiracy believer. If so you probably think the Americans faked the Apollo landings, that 'face' on Mars is real, Elvis is alive, there really is an ancient civilisation under Antarctica, the Earth is flat and the Moon is made of green cheese. In which case I wash my hands of you. Cultural Power Shift (08 December 2008)1421 and 1434 are remarkable, groundbreaking books. I found the contents enthralling, riveting and astonishing. Written with passion and intuition, I am in no doubt that providence and fate has called Mr. Menzies to compile these incredible books. He provides persuasive evidence that challenges the prevailing view of history and urges us to open our minds. The backlash he is receiving is a glowing tribute that he is unto something quite special. Gavin Menzies "lack of schooling" has freed him to think outside the box and present us with controversial but authentic history. He and his team must be highly commended for their courage and conviction in bringing to light how China discovered the world long before Europeans, their crucial contribution to the Renaissance and Western civilisation and ultimately to our common global heritage. The repercussions of 1421 and 1434's defining impact is a timely and important contribution to China's re-emergence as a major player on the world stage which will ultimately be for the benefit of all of us. H Sun How did this ever get published?! (07 September 2008)Garbage. That's what this is. Garbage. It's bad enough that the fore-runner to this book was swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the gullible thousands; but for a sequel, even more outlandish in its thesis, to receive a similar welcome is a poor reflection on the intelligence of the average reader. There are thousands, if not millions, of academic books, papers, theses, and disseratations that paint a different image of how China and Europe shared knowledge. None of them mention this armada. Garbage. I Am Chinese! (15 August 2008)This literally unbelievable book has shown me that my whole upbringing was a lie - I am actually Chinese and everything I have enjoyed about life has come from China. Amazing. Where was the computer that I am typing this review on made? Why, China of course. What more proof do you need? What has it taken so long for the indisputable facts of the Chinese creation of everything to come to light? One can only surmise that a long running conspiracy between the Knights Templar, the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei has been running things behind the scenes. No coincidence I'm sure that Gavin Menzies' books contain exactly the same kind of selective historiography, illogical leaps of reasoning, reasoning from effect to cause and all the other deductive confidence tricks readers of the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail et.al have embraced for years. Highly recommended for the gullible. Definitely worth reading (16 July 2008)Gavin Menzies is neither an academic nor a lawyer, so his writing may occasionally be repetitive and he does not produce a watertight case, but do not let this put you off - in the core of this book is the fascinating theory that the Chinese donated their encyclopedia of knowledge to the Venetians as a gesture of magnamity and to prove to the world that the Chinese were the most advanced society in the world. The world would be a different place today if the next emperor, a few years later, had not decided to cut China off from the world. Left with a repository of mechanical drawings explaining hydraulics, astronomy, weapons, manufacture etc, but no-one to explain the (Chinese) instructions, the handful of Italians with this gold dust then spent the next decades trying to decipher the knowledge the Chinese had donated to them. Decades of analysis let eventually to the "invention" by the Italians of all the things that the Chinese had actually invented hundreds of years before. So Leonardo Da Vinci was just a fine illustrator and a blatant plagiarist, however it will take some time for us Europeans, brought up believing that Leonardo and his ilk are heroes, to accept a less Eurocentric view of world history. Gavin Menzies has pursued a line of inquiry as unique as it is astounding, yet in the process has turned up masses of evidence and convinced me that he is on the right track. It will be interesting to see if others agree. By the way, if you are going to read 1434, I recommend you read 1421 first. | |
