| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Richard C. Foltz. Religions of the Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Exchange from Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century. New York: St. Martin's. 1999. Pp. viii, 186. $24.95.

This is a very small book for a very large subject whose subtitle promises something that the text does not provide. It might have been possible to squeeze into the about 50,000 words of text a survey of the religions along the Silk Road, but to attempt to incorporate overland trade and cultural exchange over almost two millennia is a tall order indeed, one that the author failed to fill. 1

From secondary sources, most of them in English, Richard C. Foltz has distilled a book written "first and foremost with the student and general reader in mind" (p. vii). It is certain that the reader unfamiliar with the subject will find in this book much information of interest: most of it accurate, some of it not. Foltz, in an uphill battle, makes a serious effort to hedge his statements with a multiplicity of stylistic devices such as "although firm evidence is lacking, it is not unlikely," "it has been suggested," and "it has been argued." If Foltz, as he states in the preface (p. vii), wished to avoid "resolving disputes over fineries of detail," he could have done so. There is enough undisputed material to be used on a subject so vast. . . .

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