Jack Weatherford is a professor of anthropology at Macalester College in Minnesota. He is a specialist in tribal peoples and the author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Indian Givers, Native Roots, Savages and Civilization and The History of Money.

Jack Weatherford's remarkable narrative of the events captures the creativity of Chinggis Khaan and the Mongols. Whereas most histories of the Mongols have long emphasized their unprecedented success in war, Weatherford builds a solid case that shows the social and economic achievements of the Mongols may have been even more remarkable than their adaptations to warfare. The author makes the argument that the Mongols were fairly civilized by the standards of the thirteenth century, almost never engaging in torture, mutilation, or maiming.