From the shores of the Danube River in Europe eastward for five thousand miles to the Great Wall of China lie wide stretches of grassy plains, called the steppes. From this Eurasian heartland, bordered on the north by forests and on the south by deserts, sprang countless nomadic tribes which again and again disdained all boundaries, threatening established empires and changing the course of history.

From earliest times the domestication of the horse and the climate of the steppes made nomads of its people—hardy, freedom-loving herdsmen who sought and fought for new pastures as the seasons changed. And in later centuries the war-like spirit born in these expert horsemen became the terror of the civilized world. For over three thousand years, wave after wave of unrelenting hordes—Scyths, Huns, Goths, Mongols, Tatars, Turks, Magyars and Medes— swept out of the steppes to devastate Assyria, Persia, India, the mighty and distant empires of China and Rome, and later, the Western nations of Europe. Attila, Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Tamerlane—all sons of the steppe—challenged the world with their own kingdoms, built rich cities like Karakorum, Peking, Bukhara and "golden" Samarkand, and int he wake of destruction left a unique heritage and a lasting spirit of loyalty, epic bravery, and national freedom.

Mr. Fairservis's fascinating introduction to these little-known but significant peoples, based on primary source material and his own archaeological excavations in the steppe lands, is dramatically illustrated by Richard M. Powers.

From the dust jacket