Publishers Weekly
06/06/2022
Journalist and travel writer Sattin (Young Lawrence) delivers an insightful examination of the role nomadic cultures played in the development of modern civilization. Contending that nomadic groups were essential to the cyclical rise, development, breakdown, and regeneration of settled societies across the Middle East and Eurasian steppe, Sattin details confrontations and collaborations between “the mobile and the settled” in the early empires of Egypt, Greece, Persia, and Rome; chronicles the rise of Islam among Persian tribesmen and the expansion of the Mongol Empire across Central Asia; and explores the impact of colonialism and industrialization on nomadic societies around the world. Throughout, Sattin lucidly explains recent archaeological, linguistic, and genealogical research; draws vivid profiles of 14th-century Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, Yuan dynasty founder Kubilai Khan, and others; and illuminates the impact of pandemic diseases, climate change, and environmental degradation on world history. He also makes a convincing case that the brutality of nomadic cultures has been overstated and that their virtues, including adaptability, inclusion, and respect for nature, offer valuable lessons for today. Enriched by Sattin’s evocative prose and tangible enthusiasm for the subject, this sweeping survey informs and entertains. (Sept.)
Colin Thubron
"Anthony Sattin’s Nomads spreads before us a sweeping panorama of nomadism that resonates through the past and echoes poignantly even in the present."
Jerry Brotton
"A fabulous piece of evocative writing, mixing personal stories with an epic sweep of history.… I loved it."
Literary Review - Bijan Omrani
"A sweeping history of nomadism from prehistory to the modern age.… Not only readable but also vital."
Roland Philipps
"I was riveted by the shifts to nomadic culture, Sapiens-like, and by the feeling of learning lightly worn and deftly transmitted. This is a major book."
Wall Street Journal - Adam Kuper
"Nomads delivers good stories."
William Dalrymple
"Nomads is a thoughtful, lyrical, yet ambitiously panoramic study of what Anthony Sattin calls ‘our wandering other half.’ As fleet and light-footed as its subject, it takes us along a dizzying path, over many of the highest ridges of human history, looking down from the time when we were all nomads, and a world without walls or borders, to the divided, fractured, and hobbled world of today. It is an important, generous, and beautifully written book."
Times
"A book of beauty and beguiling rhythm."
Spectator - Hugh Thomson
"Triumphantly tells the story of another way of living."
Marc David Baer
"A spirited defense of freedom of conscience, freedom of movement and migration, a romantic tribute to independence and to free spirit, and to being in tune with the rhythms of nature."
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2022-08-16
A meditation on human wandering through history, looking deep into past and future alike.
Sattin tells the story of a life-and-death rivalry between settled farmers and roving pastoralists. That conflict was not always thus, writes the author, a British traveler with long-standing interest in the Middle East, and he begins with a consideration of “the challenges of being a herder in the Zagros Mountains in the twenty-first century.” The challenges they face today are similar to those of their ancestors, fulfilling a biological imperative to move and keep on moving, hard-wired into human DNA. Sattin digs into the urban-rural divide, noting that one of the earliest cities known to history, a Turkish site called Göbekli Tepe, sturdy and well built, was apparently never meant to be inhabited: It was a place of the gods. Just so, there was ancient Baghdad, built on a circular plan “around which the nomadic world could turn.” At some point in history, those who stayed close to or within the walls began to fear those who moved freely outside, and for good reason. Sattin considers the history of the Mongols, who, from deep within Asia, built an empire that encompassed much of Europe but whose wandering ways, albeit violent, “stimulated the nearest thing the world had ever seen to a global trade network.” One has to wander in order to make sales, after all. The author observes that people will be made to move in the future because of climate change—perhaps a net positive given that nomadic ways are “less damaging for the natural world and therefore better for the future of the planet on which we all depend.” Brimming with literary, historical, and anthropological references, Sattin’s book makes a splendid rejoinder—and without its fictions—to Bruce Chatwin’s now-classic book The Songlines.
A treat for any thoughtful traveler, armchair or otherwise.
