For centuries, fame and fortune was to be found in the west - in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of adventure and riches. The region stretching from eastern Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China and India, is taking centre stage in international politics, commerce and culture - and is shaping the modern world. This region, the true centre of the earth, is obscure to many in the English-speaking world. Yet this is where civilization itself began, where the world's great religions were born and took root. The Silk Roads were no exotic series of connections, but networks that linked continents and oceans together. Along them flowed ideas, goods, disease and death. This was where empires were won - and where they were lost. As a new era emerges, the patterns of exchange are mirroring those that have criss-crossed Asia for millennia. The Silk Roads are rising again. A major reassessment of world history, The Silk Roads is an important account of the forces that have shaped the global economy and the political renaissance in the re-emerging east.

'Medieval market,' 'bustling High Street', 'wild west 'a wasteland, 'massage parlours' 'gay area' 'up and coming.' Old Market conjures a myriad of conflicting associations in the minds of Bristolians...There is some truth to all these associations. They reveal the story of Old Market's brightest hour as part of Bristol's shopping Golden Mile, the turbulent inter-war years, the impact of war, post war decline brought on by housing road and retail redevelopment, rejuvenation by sexual and ethnic minority groups. Vice and Virtue details each phase, introducing the reader to the people, the institutions and the processes that have created Old Market's rich heritage. The title is a playful nod to complex and interlinked themes that have defined this area for centuries.