of mythic wealth, beauty, and harmony called Xanadu - the summer retreat of the Emperor of China, the great Kublai Khan. The empire of the great Khan extended form the Mediterranean to the China sea, and along the fabled Silk Road, European and Arab merchants shipped the exquisite products of Chinese civilization. Not only were China's luxury goods exported, but its technologies as well, for scientific discovery and technological innovation have long been regarded as the source of wealth and power. Roads to Xanadu is a journey through world history that follows the different roads taken by nations to achieve wealth and power. It traces the differing roads of social and technological change that have been followed in east Asia and in the west. It looks at why technological innovations first developed in China should have had such different social and economic impacts when they were eventually taken up in Europe, and the different roads Japan and China were to take in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as they attempted to come to terms with the threat of European imperialism."--Jacket.