James Delgado does a splendid job as a cultural historian in showing how the legend of a brave but doomed defence, supported by the intervention of the gods, shaped national identity over seven centuries

Dredging not only the sea but also historical records, Delgado tells us something new - some of it speculative but most of it richly authentic - about a great nautical adventure

Engaging and highly readable

One finishes the book ready to strap on mask and tanks to dive for the buried remains of the shops that still hold more Mongol secrets

Delgado's knowledge of water and his archaeological passion for retrieving what history has scattered across sea beds from San Francisco to Vietnam

This is history at its best - the world's greatest naval disaster brought to vivid life by a rare combination of personal experience and rigorous scholarship.

Terrific ... a fascinating adventure tale packed with insights into a maritime empire about which most Westerners know almost nothing.

Through brilliant and painstaking research Delgado has brought Khubilai Khan's lost fleet to the surface, showing for the first time the true nature of the doomed adventure.

Delgado has long been my favourite author on maritime history

His conclusions neatly balance the equally pertinent questions of why Communist systems collapse, and why they lasted so long

One of Britain's leading experts on communism provides a grimly humorous and richly anecdotal study

Scholarly, well-paced and critical...few can match him for insider knowledge

Balanced, insightful, illuminated by intriguing detail and flashes of humour, this worldwide panorama is a miracle of compression

This superb book gives the history of the ideology and the reasons for its decline

It reads like Sovietology rendered by John le Carré

The book is well written with flashes of mordant humour and sufficient records of personal foibles and institutional stupidity to keep the reader going through some dreadful moments of human history