When Asia Was the World debutantes rivals -- and drew on

rivals -- and drew on tens of thousands of pages of documents to produce this extraordinary and first-ever portrait of a legend and his times

"de-skilled" conceptual artists at the Miami Art Basel Fair

Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters

Each was young and inexperienced in the ways of the world

Includes a surprise fold-out page inside

When Asia Was the World debutantes rivals -- and drew onWhile European civilization stagnated in the "Dark Ages," Asia flourished as the wellspring of science, philosophy, and religion. Linked together by a web of spiritual, commercial, and intellectual connections, the distant regions of Asia's vast civilization, from Arabia to China, hummed with trade, international diplomacy, and the exchange of ideas. Stewart Gordon has fashioned a compelling and unique look at Asia from AD 700 to 1500 a time when Asia