Rating: 
Summary: Go to the Source
Review: This volume will enthrall anyone interested in true adventure. Marco Polo was the original Indiana Jones and then some. Please do not waste time on Gary Jennings' The Journeyer. This is the real deal and needs no dramatic embellishments. The Travels takes you on a trip from 13th century Venice to "Cathay" and back again. You will learn how Europeans found out about fireworks, paper currency, printing and pasta. The harrowing journey across the Gobi desert is particularly well reported. Marco Polo was more than an explorer. He was one of the world's first anthropologists. This is an exciting read, an account of how medieval Europe initially perceived China and the far east, and of how the Mongol rulers and Chinese emperors perceived them. Highly recommended. As to the print quality of the Penguin edition, I have had my copy since the early eighties and it has yellowed only slightly. Viking is now printing on acid-free paper. One must remember that these editions were printed primarily to reach the widest audience for the least amount of expense at the time. For years, Penguins were accessible to students and to the collector who couldn't afford an elaborate, fully illustrated, fully mapped volume of a particular work. I couldn't have read as many of them as I did in my late teens and early twenties if that were not the case. I owe a lifelong debt to the editors for their efforts. I've also never read a bad translation of any Penguin Classic.
Rating:
Summary: A book as one should be - in content and presentation
Review: Though after reading authors such as Edward Said I should know better, I greatly enjoyed Marco Polo's description of his travels. And I think that it is "Messer Marco's" somewhat simpleminded, straightforward, naively "Western" and "Orientalist" approach towards what he saw that makes his book so entertaining. His breathless, hyperbolic descriptions of his travels seem calculated, whether consciously or unconsciously, to give the reader a vision of a world so strange, so wonderful to the Western mind, that they could only comprehend it if they saw it for themselves. And in many ways he (and his ghostwriter) succeeds in producing that effect. His accounts of the Great Khan's feasts and huge array of riches and servants, and well as his descriptions of "strange" (usually sexual) native customs definitely strive to highlight the differences between what he sees as Eastern and Western civilization. As such, he chooses only the most spectacular and different aspects of life under the Great Khan, aspects that are not coincidentally the most exciting and interesting to read about. Of course, Marco's evaluations and interpretations of what he sees are not to be taken too seriously, but this doesn't make them any less entertaining. Marco's outdated biases and ethnocentric, simplistic interpretations of Asian life give the book an underlying comedic effect.
For pure (somewhat trashy) reading fun Marco Polo's account of his travels is a genuine success. Of course, from the standpoint of East/West relations it has more disturbing implications. However, to fully analyze Marco Polo's significance to later Western thought about China, it's implications in the general "Orientalist" framework as laid out by Said (if you believe in that sort of thing), and how his own prejudices (slavish respect of power, extreme interest in material wealth, dogmatic Christian religious ideas) colored his account is beyond my power.
Rating: 
Summary: Marco Polo: Giant and Canary
Review: Though after reading authors such as Edward Said I should know better, I greatly enjoyed Marco Polo's description of his travels. And I think that it is "Messer Marco's" somewhat simpleminded, straightforward, naively "Western" and "Orientalist" approach towards what he saw that makes his book so entertaining. His breathless, hyperbolic descriptions of his travels seem calculated, whether consciously or unconsciously, to give the reader a vision of a world so strange, so wonderful to the Western mind, that they could only comprehend it if they saw it for themselves. And in many ways he (and his ghostwriter) succeeds in producing that effect. His accounts of the Great Khan's feasts and huge array of riches and servants, and well as his descriptions of "strange" (usually sexual) native customs definitely strive to highlight the differences between what he sees as Eastern and Western civilization. As such, he chooses only the most spectacular and different aspects of life under the Great Khan, aspects that are not coincidentally the most exciting and interesting to read about. Of course, Marco's evaluations and interpretations of what he sees are not to be taken too seriously, but this doesn't make them any less entertaining. Marco's outdated biases and ethnocentric, simplistic interpretations of Asian life give the book an underlying comedic effect.
For pure (somewhat trashy) reading fun Marco Polo's account of his travels is a genuine success. Of course, from the standpoint of East/West relations it has more disturbing implications. However, to fully analyze Marco Polo's significance to later Western thought about China, it's implications in the general "Orientalist" framework as laid out by Said (if you believe in that sort of thing), and how his own prejudices (slavish respect of power, extreme interest in material wealth, dogmatic Christian religious ideas) colored his account is beyond my power.
Rating:
Summary: Makes History come alive!!
Review: You may have heard in school about Marco Polo and his journey to China and India. But this book describes the sites and people he and his group saw during their travels in the Middle Ages. This is one of the first travel guides that have inspire people from Christopher Columbus to modern tourist.
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