Essential history
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford. The essential modern revisionist history, readable and rigorous. Our first recommendation.
The Secret History of the Mongols, 1240 anonymous Mongol author. Primary source for our guide rise. Paul Kahn's translation is the most readable.
Essential travel writing
In the Empire of Genghis Khan by Stanley Stewart. A horseback journey across Mongolia. Beautiful, observational, respectful.
Hearing Birds Fly by Louisa Waugh. Two years as an English teacher in western Mongolia. Honest and affectionate.
Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong. Inner Mongolia, not Mongolia itself, but the ecological and cultural themes are interconnected. Banned in China for a reason.
Contemporary Mongolian fiction
The Blue Sky by Galsan Tschinag. A Tuvan boyhood in western Mongolia. Short, gentle, essential.
The Green-Eyed Lama by our guide Tsedevdamba. A Mongolian woman writes the story of her grandmother through the 1937 purges.
Nomadic and environmental
The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson. A father takes his autistic son to Mongolia to meet reindeer shamans. Moving and true.
On the Trail of Genghis Khan by Tim Cope. A three-year horseback journey from Mongolia to Hungary. Astonishing commitment.
Field guides
Lonely Planet Mongolia. The best guidebook by a long measure. Keep it in your kit.
Bonus: the poetry
Mongolian Steppe Poetry, various translators. The oral poetic tradition rendered in English. Find the Pegg collection.
Where to buy in Mongolia
Internom bookstore on the main square has the best English-language selection in UB. Internationally: Amazon for new, AbeBooks for out-of-print, second-hand is sometimes the only option for older titles.
