Domesticated for milk : the entanglement begins, 40,000-2000 BCE -- Horses for heroes : horse herders enter the settled world, 2000-500 BCE -- Engines of empire : Iran and India, 500 BCE-400 CE -- Desperately seeking heavenly horses : China, 200 BCE-400 CE -- Silk Road or horse road : China and Inda, 100 BCE-500 CE -- Equine mania : China, the Turks, and the world, 500-1100 CE -- Hunting for supremacy : Eurasia, 900-1200 CE -- As far as our horses' hooves run : Genghis Khan's empire, 1206-1368 -- Riding the whirlwind : Timür and his descendants, 1370-1747 -- The empires strike back : China and Russia, 1584-1800 -- The great game : British India and Russia, 1739-1881 -- March, trot, gallop, charge : the last horse powers, 1890-1919 -- Epilogue : a royal Buzkashi game, 1950-1973

"A captivating history of civilization that reveals the central role of the horse in culture, commerce, and conquest. No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating the horse allowed early humans to settle the vast Eurasian steppe; later, their horses enabled new forms of warfare, encouraged long-distance trade routes, and ended up acquiring deep cultural and religious significance. Over time, horses came to power mighty empires in Iran, Afghanistan, China, India, and, later, Russia. Genghis Khan and the thirteenth-century Mongols offer the most famous example, but from ancient Assyria and Persia, to the seventeenth-century Mughals, to the high noon of colonialism in the early twentieth century, horse breeding was indispensable to conquest and statecraft."--