An impressive body of meticulous scholarship, "The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes: The Ancient World Economy and the Empires of Parthia, Central Asia and Han China" is an extraordinarily informative study and one that is unreservedly recommended.

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Midwest Book Review

After reading this book, I have become more enlightened about Rome’s place in the ancient world. Contrary to the purported claims of many documentaries, the Roman Empire lacked key ingredients to become a global superpower, namely steel weaponry and a sustainable economic structure based on manufacturing. I found it somewhat eerie when I realized that the Roman dilemma presented in this book has repeated many times in history e.g. British obsession with Chinese tea in the 1800s and American trade deficit today. I hope that scholars perform more research of this kind so that we may learn about essential institutional and economic features that supported the ancient empires.

Kunwon Saw, Freelance

In all this is a fascinating book that outlines the characteristics of several cultures spanning a third of the globe. Military, political, and especially economic information underline the relationships and events of the time. Anyone reading this book is going to understand a very special period of our past a whole lot better, and on that I cannot fault this book. This is a work that delves into a subject that has rarely been given any serious literature, a labour of love by the author, and even if half the book is correct, what I just finished reading is astonishing. An entire complex global community in a world that's gone forever. But not forgotten.

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UNRV

This is a fascinating look at a fairly obscure area of Ancient history.

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History of War

Ground-breaking study

Minerva, March/April 2017 – reviewed by Dominic Green

The coverage of the intermediaries is what makes this book so fascinating for me and lifts it above many of the others. It also allows the author to cover things which were controversies in the past... All in all a book I'd recommend to anybody interested in this period.

SlingShot, November-December 2016 - reviewed by Jim Webster

The Roman Empire and The Silk Routes,
by Raoul McLaughlin, is an investigation into the importance of economic development of the
silk at the time of the Han Empire and
of the Roman Empire. The originality of the book
resides in its organization: the author begins by describing the Chinese empire,its organization and the springs of its economy, and then travels gradually to the west.

VaeVictis, January - February 2017

An excellent read considering what a dry subject this could be, and one I shall return to.

Miniature Wargames, November 2016 - reviewed by John Treadaway