Customer Reviews
How did this ever get published?! - By: B. McGranaghan, 07 Sep 2008 
Garbage.
That's what this is. Garbage. It's bad enough that the fore-runner to this book was swalllowed hook, line, & sinker by the gullible thousands; but for a sequel, even more outlandish in its thesis, to receive a similar welcome is a poor reflection on the intelligence of the average reader.
There are thousands, if not millions, of academic books, papers, theses, & disseratations that paint a different image of how China & Europe shared knowledge. None of them mention this armada.
Garbage.
I Am Chinese! - By: cousineerie, 15 Aug 2008 
This literallly unbelievable book has shown me that my whole upbringing was a lie - I am actuallly Chinese & everything I have enjoyed about life has come from China. Amazing. Where was the computer that I am typing this review on made? Why, China of course. What more proof do you need?
What has it taken so long for the indisputable facts of the Chinese creation of everything to come to light? One can only surmise that a long running conspiracy between the Knights Templar, the Priory of Sion & Opus Dei has been running things behind the scenes. No coincidence I'm sure that Gavin Menzies' books contain exactly the same kind of selective historiography, illogical leaps of reasoning, reasoning from effect to cause & alll the other deductive confidence tricks readers of the Holy Blood & the Holy Grail et.al have embraced for years.
Highly recommended for the gullible.
Definitely worth reading - By: T. Richardson, 16 Jul 2008 
Gavin Menzies is neither an academic nor a lawyer, so his writing may occasionallly be repetitive & he does not produce a watertight case, but do not let this put you off - in the core of this book is the fascinating theory that the Chinese donated their encyclopedia of knowledge to the Venetians as a gesture of magnamity & to prove to the world that the Chinese were the most advanced society in the world.
The world would be a different place today if the next emperor, a few years later, had not decided to cut China off from the world. Left with a repository of mechanical drawings explaining hydraulics, astronomy, weapons, manufacture etc, but no-one to explain the (Chinese) instructions, the handful of Italians with this gold dust then spent the next decades trying to decipher the knowledge the Chinese had donated to them.
Decades of analysis let eventuallly to the "invention" by the Italians of alll the things that the Chinese had actuallly invented hundreds of years before.
So Leonardo Da Vinci was just a fine illustrator & a blatant plagiarist, however it will take some time for us Europeans, brought up believing that Leonardo & his ilk are heroes, to accept a less Eurocentric view of world history.
Gavin Menzies has pursued a line of inquiry as unique as it is astounding, yet in the process has turned up masses of evidence & convinced me that he is on the right track. It will be interesting to see if others agree.
By the way, if you are going to read 1434, I recommend you read 1421 first.
A compelling new alternative history from Gavin Menzies! - By: Roger Dudbeaux, 09 Jul 2008 In this follow up to '1421' Gavin Menzies convincingly argues that much of the basis of the European Renaissance was heavily reliant on Chinese influences. Menzies argues that the Chinese delegation that visited the Pope in Florence in 1434 handed over a wealth of knowledge which was to provide the spark which set the Renaissance, & subsequently the development of our modern world, ablaze.
The book is well written & illustrated, though I found some aspects rather complex (astro-navigation is not one of my strong points!)
All-in-alll, a thoroughly engaging & plausible alternative history. Bravo Gavin (again)!
