In the past, all roads led to Rome. Today they lead to Beijing. The world is changing dramatically. No matter how traumatic or comical political life may be in the era of Brexit, the chaos of modern European politics, or Donald Trump, in the 21st century, the countries of the Silk Roads truly matter. Decisions that carry weight in today's world are not made in Paris, London, Berlin, or Rome, as they were a hundred years ago, but in Beijing and Moscow, Tehran and Riyadh, Delhi and Islamabad, Kabul and the Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan, Ankara, Damascus, and Jerusalem. What happened along the Silk Roads shaped the world's past; what is happening there today will shape its future. Following these roads eastward, from Europe to China, through Russia and the Middle East, this book – the completion and update of the global bestseller The Silk Roads – comes to confirm with the most recent and unexpected data that we live in a deeply interconnected world. In this complex, predictive, and ultimately hopeful modern history, Peter Frankopan assesses the global impact of the successive shifts in the center of power, which so often are absent from the headlines of Western newspapers. He thus invites us to reconsider who we are and what our place in the world is.