A Central Asia Reading List

Here's a catalog, quirky and personal, of stuff I read in preparation for Central Asia--some not about Central Asia at all.

• Abazov, Rafis, Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia (2008). I love Atlases. Fun to have around. See earlier comment here

• Anthony, David W., The Horse, The Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (2007). Summarizes a lot of data. See earlier comment here. Be interesting to see a professional critique.

• Armstrong, Karen, The Great Transformation (2007). Chapter 1 has a provocative account of Zoroastrianism as the response of a settled people against cattle-rustling. Discussions of the early Aryans and the Vedic scriptures may also be relevant to Centraal Asia.
  

• Arnold, Matthew, Sohrab and Rustum (Gutenberg Files). An ancient epic tale of Central Asia, retold by a 19th-Century Victorian who, to the best of my knowledge, never set foot in the place, and I pity poor Henry Pilote, the English teacher at Manchester High School West who had to harry me through it back in 1953. Oh, and there is this.
  

• Barfield, Thomas, The Perilous Frontier (1992). More about China than Central Asia, but instructive on how steppe warriors operate. Earlier comments here.

• Findley, Carter Vaughn, The Turks in World History (2005). "Professorial" (ahem!), but instructive overview of Turkish culture. Snippets here.

• Grousset, René, The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia (English Trans. 1970). A classic, unfortunately. Slow going, a welter of detail But worth the effort. Chapters on Genghis Khan and Tamerlane especially good.

• Herodotus, Histories, Book IV 1-144 (many editions) classic account of "the Scythians," practitioners of "the Scythian defense"--first reported account of nomad warfare.
  

• Hildinger, Erik, Warriors of the Steppe (2001). Reviewed here. Remarkably helpful account of steppe warfare; great lessons on the importance of tactics and "choosing their own war."

• Hopkirk, Peter, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (1992). Canonical text on the 19th-Century clash of empires.

• Hopkirk, Peter, Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream of an Empire in Asia (1996). Less extensive than Great Game, but in some ways more interesting.

• Kemal, Yashar, Memed, My Hawk (NYRB 2005). Not Central Asia, but a memorable window into traditional Turkic society. Reviewed here.

• LeVine, Steve, The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea (2007). Boy's own adventure tale of the scramble for oil in the post-Soviet years, fun to read but made largely irrelevant by the new assertion of Soviet power. A snippet here.
  

• Lewis, Geoffrey, ed. The Book of Dede Korkut (1976). Bardic recitations from the Oghuz Turks, exact origins lost in the mists of time. Forceful and dramatic, but so full of paranoia and betrayal they get depressing after a while (my friend Judy asks: have you tried reading the Old Testament?).

• Marozzi, Justin, Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (2004). A warning, not a recommendation. Save your money. Amateurish and haphazard. Read the Tamerlane chapter of Grousset, supra, instead. A brief excerpt from Marozzi is here.

• Platonov, Soul (NYRB 2007). The title story is a hair-raising account of life in a dying desert society on the edge of the modern (Soviet) world. Said to be even better in Russian. Other comments here.

• Olcutt, Martha Brill, Central Asia's Second Chance (2005). Good "first book" on current issues. See earlier comments here.

• Polo, Marco, Travels, many editions. Less on Central Asia than you might expect, but always good fun. See excerpts here.

• Whitfield, Susan, Life Along the Silk Road (2001). Earlier comments here.

Optional Extra: I hate to admit it, but this tune was running through my mind the whole trip.