After tramping through Marco Polo’s ’Travel’s’ and not being able to make much sense of place names and old world euphemisms, Bergreen’s book is a joy of information and adventure. He sticks closely to Marco’s journey, but also includes a lot of background information on the Polo family, the times and the places he is visiting, and seeing the big picture in context crystallizes everything. It’s still a big book and a bit of a slog to get through, but I liked how it straddled the lines between biography, history text and adventure story. There are also 3 sets of nice photos, but I could have done with some more maps. I’m a map junkie.