The Travels of Marco PoloManuel Komroff
The Travels of Marco Polo
by Manuel Komroff · first published 1953
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2011–2025first – last mentioned
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…chronological order by authorship or content (and I've probably forgotten a few): Euclid The Elements Arrian The Campaigns of Alexander Garmonsway (trans.) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Komroff (ed.) The Travels of Marco Polo Haydn The Counter-Renaissance Braudel The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II, Vol I&II Pascal The Thoughts Spinoza The Ethics Christianson In the Presence of the Creator:…
on “PG's Rarely Asked Questions” ↗The Travels of Marco Polo (I prefer the Modern Library edition translated by Manuel Komroff (it was published in 1931, but the source dates to the 13th-14th centuries))
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite classic books?” ↗The travels of Marco Polo(1300) talks about books in China so cheap that people could actually buy them as they are made from woodblocks. But "cheap" here is not the price of a book today. A book requires someone spending at…
on “The Buddhist history of moveable type before Gutenberg (2016)” ↗I've first heard of this custom while reading Marco polo's "Le livre des merveilles du monde" (The Travels of Marco Polo). IIRC the editor's notes, the custom did exist in some places of the Himalaya mountains. > The guest may stay and enjoy the wife's society as long as he lists, whilst the husband has no shame in the…
on “In Amish village, a rural doctor sees the rarest diseases on Earth” ↗This sounds really bad. I recently read the famous The Travels of Marco Polo by Rustichello da Pisa and remember calling this chapter out for my wife in delight of recognizing asbestos: Everybody must be aware that it can be no animal's nature to live in fire, seeing that every…
on “Asbestos Cigarette Filters” ↗…interesting abandoned city in the Gobi Desert instead: > Built in 1032, the city thrived under the rule of the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty. It has been identified as the city of Etzina, which appears in The Travels of Marco Polo. ... > According to a legend of the local Torghut population, in 1372 a Mongol military general named Khara Bator was surrounded with his troops by the armies of the Ming dynasty. Diverting the Ejin…
on “What's Behind the Mysterious Ancient Wall in the Gobi Desert?” ↗…in Europe through the accounts of travelers, such as Marco Polo and William of Rubruck.[16][27] Marco Polo's account of paper money during the Yuan dynasty is the subject of a chapter of his book, The Travels of Marco Polo, titled "How the Great Kaan Causeth the Bark of Trees, Made into Something Like Paper, to Pass for Money All Over his Country".[17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknote#European_explorers_an... okay…
on “What Benjamin Franklin Learned While Fighting Counterfeiters” ↗