In 1998, the American cellist Yo-Yo Ma started to wonder if the Silk Road could offer a model for an alternate form of globalization, in which strangers from the lands crossed by ancient trade ...

The main 21st-century rail-and-oil trade route passes through central Azerbaijan’s second city, Ganja, whose silk road credentials are less publicized. However, this too was also an historically ...

Christopher Wilton-Steer A version of this article appears in print on July 27, 2025, Page 22 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Up Close / ‘The Silk Road,’ by Christopher Wilton-Steer.

The Silk Road was the first great globalization scheme. From 130 B.C. to 1453 A.D., ideas, goods, cultures, and religions flowed between this overland trade route connecting the Far East, China ...

Access to water contributed to Dunhuang’s strategic importance so that by the 6th century it had become a hub of commerce along the Silk Road. Photo: Christopher Wilton-Steer ...