Bloomberg News Raves About “Silk Road to Ruin”

Bloomberg News Service has published a rave review of SILK ROAD TO RUIN.

An excerpt:

For decades in the 19th century, the world’s superpowers competed in Central Asia in what became known as the Great Game, an epic scramble for influence and resources that still is being played today. Despite the high stakes — including what may be the planet’s largest reserves of oil and natural gas — the competition for the exotic lands between the Himalayas and Russia’s southern border has had remarkably few chroniclers.

With “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?” Ted Rall fills that void with a book that combines fascination with Asian exoticism and the punchy distancing of cartoons and pop-culture irony.

Rall is a former investment banker and expert in the harsh but potentially wealthy region known as “the Stans.” His book is an unconventional, provocative and bitterly funny mix of travel diary, tour guide and graphic novel based on the author’s voyages, from Beijing to Turkmenistan through China’s remote Xinjiang region and the oil-rich steppes of Kazakhstan.