By: Gavin Menzies
This is a highly interesting description of the very speculative impact of the putative visit of a Ming empire treasure fleet to Italy in 1434. There are a lot of qualifiers in the previous sentence, because the evidence is sometimes tenuous for Menzies's rather radical claims for the dependence of the Renaissance on Chinese knowledge. On the other hand, there is evidence for some Chinese influence, and Menzies's book reads like a mystery story as he investigates various possible contacts and threads of evidence. It makes for intriguing revisionist history. (Non-fiction) 08/07/09
