Book Review: The Mongol Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia

Abstract

Timothy May is a scholar and historian of the Mongol Empire, and currently is the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of North Georgia. As the editor and main contributing author of the The Mongol Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia, it is his hope that this reference source “will lay a foundation for further investigation” (xiii). As he explains in the preface, “With an empire the size of the Mongol Empire, invariably something must be omitted. Two volumes are simply not enough to include everything that could be included” (xiii). That being said, May and the eighteen contributors did a remarkable job of addressing the broad and complex subject of Mongolian history from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries, and created an encyclopedia that is all-encompassing and full of very rich and interesting history.