Imagine a wall 30 feet high, a wall thousands of miles long, a wall that crossed deserts and climbed over impossibly jagged peaks, a wall that contained thousands of individual forts and towers, a wall that was guarded by over a million soldiers, a wall that took 200 years to build.

Now imagine the enemy that this wall was built to defend against.

The Mongols were nomadic warriors of legendary skill and savagery. Their empire encompassed most of the known world, from southern Asia to northern Europe; from the Middle East to the Sea of Japan. Now the fierce and unstoppable horsemen were bearing down on China. For the Chinese, there seemed only one solution: to turn their country into a vast fortress.

The Great Wall chronicles a people's struggle for absolute security in a violent and dangerous world. It is a story of astonishing success and ultimate failure, of ingenuity, determination, the will to survive and, in the end, futility.

From the dust jacket