"An excellent way to get students thinking about how cross-cultural contact changes over time is to read what travelers wrote in different eras. Anthony Barbieri-Low makes this easy for instructors by pairing accounts from travelers moving in opposite directions across Eurasia, to and from China. The book’s illustrations and maps further enrich comparison and should spark lively discussion." —Patricia Ebrey, University of Washington
"This book deftly juxtaposes pairs of travel accounts, one written by an Asian, often Chinese, traveler heading west and one by a European journeying east. The structure recalls Plutarch’s Lives, which pairs a Greek figure with a Roman one, and it succeeds brilliantly because the dialogue between the two sources brings out qualities in each that might otherwise remain unseen. Parallel Journeys will go a long way toward correcting the longstanding but mistaken belief that only Europeans traveled while others, including the Chinese, did not." —Valerie Hansen, Yale University
“The editor is diligent in providing context for the reader. He introduces each text and author, summarizes the content of the work, gives succinct and often interesting excerpts, and provides useful bibliographical references. The reader is also guided by a series of maps and figures and entertained with accounts of monsters and pygmies. Barbieri-Low is also to be congratulated for his effort to include female voices and texts from a wide perspective.” —Journal of Chinese History
