Historian Frankopan Meshes Past and Present in The New Silk Road

Accomplished television executive David Preschlack has been named to the SportsBusiness Journal “Forty Under 40” list on multiple occasions and was recently included in the Cablefax 100. Following a successful career as an executive vice president for ESPN, where he met his wife, David Preschlack joined NBC Sports Regional Networks as the president of platform and content strategy. In spare time, he enjoys reading nonfiction historical books. 

In 2018, historian Peter Frankopan, a Royal Historical Society fellow and global history professor at Oxford, released The New Silk Road, a follow-up to his 2015 bestseller, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. 

In the new book, Frankopan describes the political and economic changes that are poised to return economic dominance to the East, especially China. Many of the chapters center on Beijing’s massive multi-trillion-dollar undertaking, the Belt and Road Initiative, which comprises transport and infrastructure projects occurring in more than 60 countries along important land and marine trade routes. 

Throughout the book, Frankopan compares this ambitious project to the ancient silk road started by the Chinese thousands of years ago. He also cites significant external factors, including America’s waning influence and political and economic changes in Iran, Russia, and India.