George Santayana, the Spanish-American philosopher and writer, had an interesting view of history. He described it as ‘a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there.’ It was an admittedly extreme reaction, but the sentiment that prompted it is what came to this reader’s mind a few pages into Sam Djang’s exhaustive look at the life of that divisive historical figure, Genghis Khan.

Tourists walk past a sand sculpture of Genghis Khan at Xiangshawan, also called Resonant Sand Bay in northern China, in July 2007. Pic/Getty Images