We all ?know? that Marco Polo went to China, served Ghengis Khan for many years, and returned to Italy with the recipes for pasta and ice cream. But Frances Wood, head of the Chinese Department at the British Library, argues that Marco Polo not only never went to China, he probably never even made it past the Black Sea, where his family conducted business as merchants.Marco Polo's travels from Venice to the exotic and distant East, and his epic book describing his extraordinary adventures, A Description of the World, ranks among the most famous and influential books ever published. In this fascinating piece of historical detection, marking the 700th anniversary of Polo's journey, Frances Wood questions whether Marco Polo ever reached the country he so vividly described. Why, in his romantic and seemingly detailed account, is there no mention of such fundamentals of Chinese life as tea, foot-binding, or even the Great Wall? Did he really bring back pasta and ice cream to Italy? And why, given China's extensive and even obsessive record-keeping, is there no mention of Marco Polo anywhere in the archives?Sure to spark controversy, Did Marco Polo Go to China? tries to solve these and other inconsistencies by carefully examining the Polo family history, Marco Polo's activities as a merchant, the preparation of his book, and the imperial Chinese records. The result is a lucid and readable look at medieval European and Chinese history, and the characters and events that shaped this extraordinary and enduring myth.

In this authoritative biography of one of the most fascinating figures in world history, Marco Polos incredible odyssey--along the Silk Road and through all the fantastic circumstances of his life--is chronicled in sumptuous and illuminating detail. Illustrated.

Reproduction of the original.

Marco Polo Didn’t Go There is a collection of rollicking travel tales from a young writer USA Today has called “Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age.” For the past ten years, Rolf Potts has taken his keen postmodern travel sensibility into the far fringes of five continents for such prestigious publications as National Geographic Traveler, Salon.com, and The New York Times Magazine. This book documents his boldest, funniest, and most revealing journeys—from getting stranded without water in the Libyan desert, to crashing the set of a Leonardo DiCaprio movie in Thailand, to learning the secrets of Tantric sex in a dubious Indian ashram. Marco Polo Didn’t Go There is more than just an entertaining journey into fascinating corners of the world. The book is a unique window into travel writing, with each chapter containing a “commentary track”—endnotes that reveal the ragged edges behind the experience and creation of each tale. Offbeat and insightful, this book is an engrossing read for students of travel writing as well as armchair wanderers.

The son of a traveling merchant, Marco Polo spent his early years among the ports of Venice, Italy. As a young man, he headed eastward with his father and his uncle toward the lands of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. Their journey from Europe into Asia, marked by risks, setbacks, and discoveries, transformed every person involved. It also led to one of the world's most studied and most debated travelogues. Marco Tabilio, an emerging talent of Italian cartooning, creates a graphic novel in the form of a puzzle and finds the coming-of-age tale within the legend of Marco Polo.

When Mark and his mother lose touch with his father's Gobi Desert expedition, they travel to Venice, Italy, and there, while waiting for news of his father, Mark learns about Marco Polo and his adventures in the Far East.