Empires of the Steppes

By: Kenneth W. Harl

Narrated by: Corey M. Snow

A narrative history of how Attila, Genghis Khan and the so-called barbarians of the steppes shaped world civilization.

The barbarian nomads of the Eurasian steppes have played a decisive role in world history, but their achievements have gone largely unnoticed. These nomadic tribes have produced some of the world’s greatest conquerors: Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, among others. Their deeds still resonate today. Indeed, these nomads built long-lasting empires, facilitated the first global trade of the Silk Road and disseminated religions, technology, knowledge and goods of every description that enriched and changed the lives of so many across Europe, China and the Middle East. From a single region emerged a great many peoples—the Huns, the Mongols, the Magyars, the Turks, the Xiongnu, the Scythians, the Goths—all of whom went on to profoundly and irrevocably shape the modern world.

In this new, comprehensive history, Professor Kenneth W. Harl vividly re-creates the lives and world of these often-forgotten peoples from their beginnings to the early modern age. Their brutal struggle to survive on the steppes bred a resilient, pragmatic people ever ready to learn from their more advanced neighbors. In warfare, they dominated the battlefield for over fifteen hundred years. Under charismatic rulers, they could topple empires and win their own.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Great summary of a wide range of history

Dr. Harl does a wonderful job summarizing the history of Nomadic peoples of Europe and Asia into large beats and presented in a narrative form. Great introduction to several distinct cultural legacies linked by geography and lifestyles.

Good history, bad narrator

Great history book that's clearly written by an author with a solid academic background and able to synthesize a vast body of work on diverse subjects. Well worth reading.

The narrator should have never been cast for a book like this. The numerous mispronunciations of non-English words are inexcusable for a book so full of them, and what's worse is that the narrator mispronounces them inconsistently. At times the narrator can't even get English words right (like saying "chow-sir" for Chaucer).

Outstanding

A most impressive accomplishment. Wide ranging, engaging, thorough, insightful, and intellectually inspiring. A first rate scholar at his best. I learned so much. Well worthy of multiple rereads. Most highly recommended.

Interview with Dan Carlin

Listened to your interview on Dan Carlin and I just needed more so I went and found this book. It’s absolutely brilliant and it’s overflowing with knowledge that I’m still soaking up about 5 hours in and it’s wonderful. If you’re interested in the peoples of the steppe this is 100% the book for you. You can tell a lot of time and effort has gone into the research of this topic and I’m thoroughly thankful as the steppe peoples have always been a main focus on my personal goal of learning about history and military history. The steppe peoples have played such an important part of our history as humans and how they changed the world through their use of the bow and horse.

Excellent material, well-written, interesting, but spoiled by inept narrator.

I didn’t enjoy this as much as I should have because of the terrible narrator. Dr. Harl’s work is always erudite, well researched and fascinating, and this is no exception. But, the narrator seems incapable of handling any foreign language words, he’s not even great as pronouncing his, and my, own American English. He just sounds parochial and poorly educated and I had to waste too much time figuring out what his toponyms and other words meant, like the “You-shine” sea, the Euxine, I concluded. Sometimes it seems like Audible hires the most inept narrators they can find, like this one. If I can’t understand his European language pronunciation, how can I possibly follow his unfamiliar Asiatic ones? Dr. Harl could not possibly have been given the right of refusal in the selection of narrator, I would insist on that, as an author. Fortunately, the PDF is an excellent textbook, which I have printed and am now enjoying reading. I hope Dr. Harl will give us many more books on history, especially of the Greeks and Romans.