Much like 1421, I think this book might be one best read and so when I have some time I will check out both from the library and have a good look at the pictures provided. Maybe Michael Angelo was simply a talented artist who set about taking these ancient texts and vividly improving the quality of the pictures within. I still had to feel that whatever books were shared with the Europeans had to have been in Chinese,so without good translators I find it a bit hard to believe that the Italians could have simply copied many designs from the Chinese and set off the Renaissance in Europe. Gavin Menzies has illuminated us with an alternate history of the world that is backed up by his extensive research. If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from 1434? Would you ever listen to anything by Gavin Menzies again? My advice: go read some credible historical texts about the Chinese treasure fleet. It's too bad, because even without that, the parts of the book that are factual would've already been mind-blowing enough, there's no need to turn it into fiction just to make it a few percent sexier. But sadly, when you look at actual historical scholarship, many of the things Menzies writes about (like the Chinese fleet getting to Venice, the crux of the book) are crank speculations lacking any evidence. If it were all fiction, that'd be fine, it'd be literature. Or, rather, some of it's true, some of it isn't, which's arguably worse, because then you can't tell the difference.
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