Plague, Spice and Silk: What the Trade Routes Actually Traded

The Silk Road was never a single road, nor only about silk. It was a web that carried merchants, monks, nomads, and pathogens between empires and across deserts for more than a millennium. Along its routes, history's most valuable commodities-spices, textiles, metals, and beliefs-moved together with something far less desired: disease. This book uncovers what the Silk Road truly traded, blending...