Genghis Khan was the most successful conqueror to ever live. His empire was larger and longer lasting than Napolean or Julius Caesar, and unlike these guys who were killed or exiled by their own people, Khan died of old age and was loved both in his lifetime and well beyond his death.

Genghis Khan (whose given name was Temujin) is less well-known because of the incredible secrecy that the Mongols took with their history. In fact, most of the material in this book claims to come from "The Secret History of the Mongols," a text only recently rediscovered.

The Mongols were responsible for the invention of paper currency, passports, movable type, and the canon, among many other things. They spread religious tolerance, rule of law, free trade, language and literacy, merit-based government (rather than hereditary), art, culture, and much more across the span of their empire which spanned from China and Russia on the east all the way to eastern Europe and north Africa.

Kublai Khan, Genghis' grandson, became the emperor of China and was the first to unite the entire country under a single rule, founding his own dynasty.

It goes on and on like this. In fact, I found some of it a little hard to swallow - it seems like, in an attempt to counterbalance the view of Mongols as bloodthirty barbarians, they may be pushing it a bit far. It's hard to tell for sure, just a feeling I got.

Regardless, it's clear that Genghis Khan was one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known. The power of his legacy was illustrated very poignantly in the book's introduction when it described the inner Mongol homeland (place of Genghis' birth and death) as being a sacrosanct place for 800 years after the Mongol legacy, almost right up to modern times. This secret place was kept off-limits by every nation that claimed ownership to it. During Soviet rule of Mongolia, for example, it was an "off limits area" and no one was allowed to enter it. (The Russians feared that the Mongol's reverence of Genghis Khan could be a rallying point for nationalism and stoke rebellion for Mongolian independence.) Only in the 1990s with the fall of Russia did this area become accessible to historians for the first time since Genghis' rule, and in fact this is what led to the discover and translation of the Secret History.