In Genghis Khan, Weatherford tries to teach us about Genghis Khan and the Mongols. He wanted to teach us more about the history of world commerce. Even though we learned a lot about the Mongols and Genghis Khan that was not the main point he was trying to make. Genghis Khan was a very important person, and his kingdom was very important as well. The Mongols helped form the world as we know it today. Genghis Khan was a great leader and he proved it throughout the book. In the introduction, Weatherford decided to write a book on the history of world commerce. Weatherford's main point in the introduction was that the world changed from the medieval to the modern, or began to, because of the Mongols. Weatherford wrote, "The new technology, knowledge, and commercial wealth created the Renaissance in which Europe rediscovered some of its prior culture, but more importantly, absorbed the technology for printing, firearms, the compass, and the abacus from the East (p. xxiv).  The first section after the introduction was the rise of the Genghis Khan and the bringing together of the Mongolia. Genghis Khan also wanted to take down the tribes that were not nice to him at a younger age. His army began to grow larger and larger. This section comprising these three chapters is very engaging. The first chapter begins with the Genghis Khan attack on the Empire, which covers much of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the former Soviet Central Asia. In this section Weatherford provides the reader with a good sense of Genghis Khan's rise to power and how the Mongols viewed warfare. The Mongols did not believe in honor in war, but rather in gaining victory. Weatherford does a good job of illustrating that Genghis Khan was not born a "military genius . This label is often applied to the Mongol leader, but he learned from the lessons of others and then put those lessons into practice. The older Genghis Khan got the smarter he became. The second section consi