I have just finished reading a book that Stanley kindly gave me to read, to be honest at first glance I thought it wasn't my sort of book, however after reading a few pages I became fascinated by its tales of world history and adventure, so much so that I finshed the book in a few days (650 pages).

Here's a brief outline of what the book is about....Taken off the back cover

1421 The Year China Discovered the World
Gavin Menzies
Published by Bantam Press, London

"...On the 8th of March, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen sailed from its base in China. The ships, huge junks nearly five hundred feet long and built from the finest teak, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas' and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony. The journey would last over two years and circle the globe.

When they returned Zhu Di lost control and China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. The great ships rotted at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. They had also discovered Antarctica, reached Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook and solved the problem of longitude three hundred years before the Europeans..."

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