The Return of Genghis Khan

Bought this beauty at Half-Price Books today for $7.00. Had to do it. I mean...look at that cover! That Elton Fax could put it down. (Born in Baltimore, Maryland, by the way.)

About 55 years ago, my mom gave me a book about Genghis Khan. My mom gave me a lot of books, but this one stuck out. For one thing, there was one scene in it which stuck with me so hard that it regularly popped into my head. In fact, it happened just last week (apropos of nothing, not even the wet snow).

Oh, the scene? Genghis is riding his horse across the Mongolian  steppes, and he feels a little thirsty. So he takes out his knife, cuts into his horse's neck, pulls out a vein, takes a good long drink, then stuffs the vein back into the horse.

Kind of funny what stays in your memory for over half of a century, isn't it?

Anyway, the cover of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde by Harold Lamb caught my eye, and I picked it up and my first thought was, "I wonder if there's any way that this was the book I read when I was a little kid?"

It didn't look familiar. I read the first page. Nothing familiar there. Then I turned the page and...

Yep. 

Of course I bought it. I'm hoping that Joe will read it to me someday in the near future. (He's read 16 to me so far, and we're about halfway through the 17th.) It seems like the kind of book that he would like. And it would be a nice remembrance of things past for me.