I've also read the the Weatherford book about Genghis Khan and I agree he downplayed the atrocities during the conquest, but I agree with your rating - I don't

I've also read the the Weatherford book about Genghis Khan and I agree he downplayed the atrocities during the conquest, but I agree with your rating - I don't think it's a deal breaker. When studying history we have to remember that before WWII, wars of conquest were the normal expected behavior of states, as were the atrocities that come with sacking of cities. Once you've read about a couple of events, you've kind of read about them all, unfortunately. The mongol conquests however were on a different scale than most, but there is quite a bit of nonsense out there about the casualty counts. Weatherford is a fairly short book, and I wish he spent a bit more time confronting it and separating fact from fiction. Nevertheless, it remains true that atrocities and conquests were the historical norm: what separates different societies is how they rule after achieving power. It's there that we see huge differences from culture to culture. For example, I've recently seen loads of people compare Alexander & Genghis Khan to Hitler... Certainly true of their conquests - true of everyone with the skills to pull it off before WWII - but wildly wrong once they achieved power and began organizing their empires. Weatherford did a great job of explaining that missing half of the story for the Mongols, even though he gives a disappointing analysis of the human cost of building the empire.