Welcome to the rabbit hole!

I started in a similar way when it came to the Mongols. A while back I picked up a book about one of Genghis Kahn’s great generals, Subutai; the book was titled Subotai the Valiant by Richard A Gabriel. I enjoyed the story of this general so much I decided to learn more and more about him and you can’t really learn too much about Subutai without learning about the Mongols, their armies, their enemies and their life. You’ll run into a similar situation when learning about Genghis Kahn. Luckily for you however, essentially most (if not all) books about the Mongols in this specific period will talk about Temujin and his life. Even contemporary sources that came after Genghis Kahn always end up talking about him because none of this would have been possible without him.

I love contemporary sources myself and even when Fra Giovanni di Piano Carpini (Friar John of Plano Carpini) will travel to the court of the Great Kahn Ogedei (the son of Genghis Kahn) he will inevitably write about Genghis Kahn. The tactic here from Pope Innocent IV was to send the Friar and a mission to deal with the Mongol threat using diplomacy. Military action was going to be quite difficult as a few years before (1241), Batu the Grandson of Ghenghis had decisively defeated Poland and Hungary, two powerful Central European kingdoms. But his is just one source, this is just the opinion of one man, a man that came from a completely different culture on the opposite side of the world. John Carpini was an Italian but was actually residing in France at the time when the Pope called him up for this task. He traveled all the way to China where Ogedei was. I also used the title for Ogedei “Great Kahn” as that is the way John Carpini had translated it. If you look at a different source, like for example the Secret History of the Mongols, they seem to use the title Khagan, which might mean the same exact thing but my point is, you’re going to get a different view and tone of all this. The Secret History is (in my opinion) extremely important because we are seldom lucky to have written documentation from nomadic people, and this is one of those sources that is written by the Mongols about the Mongols and it was supposedly only meant for the Mongol royalty.

You might be wondering what all of this babble is about. What I am trying to get at here is that the information seems endless when tackling this sort of subject, so you’re going to have to ask yourself where you want to start and I am going to try to help with some suggestions. You’ve mentioned that you’re interested in Ghenghis Kahn himself and as I said, most books about the Mongols are going to cover him and his early battles as none of this would be possible without the ‘unification’ of the tribes.

If you’re looking for a general view of the Mongols, their leadership and their conquests I suggest some of these reads:

· The Mongol Conquests: The Military Operations of Genghis Khan and Sube'etei by Carl Fredrik Sverdrup - half of this book is just about Genghis Kahn himself, so this might be a great place to start.

· The Mongol Warlords by David Nicolle

· Genghis Kahn: His Life and Legacy by Paul Ratchnevsky is admittedly a book that I do not personally have, but have heard that it is a solid source (perhaps someone can verify or correct me here)

· Secret History of the Mongols by Paul Kahn

· Six Emperors: Rise of the Mongolian Empire by Douglas S Benson

If you’re looking to get a deeper understanding on Nomadic Steppe peoples you may need to read about some of the other Empires and tribes that came before the Mongols. Some of these sources include these books, but I warn you: these are pretty dense reads, there isn’t too much narrative here just straight up information.

· The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia by Rene Grousset translated by Naomi Walford

· The Barbarians of Asia: The Peoples of the Steppes from 1600 B.C. by Stuart Legg

I mentioned I love contemporary sources, here are some great ones:

· The Story of the Mongols: Whom we call the Tartars by Friar Giovanni Carpini, translated by Erik Hildinger

· The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Mongke by Peter Jackson

· The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period (I do not own this)

Finally, if you’re looking to go down the military path – and obviously, since the Mongols are popular because of their conquests, most of these books are going to cover war, but for a deeper dive on the soldiers you can check out these:

· The Mongols from the men at arms series by Stephen Turnbull

· Kalka River 1223 by David Nicolle

· Warriors of Eurasia by Mikhael Gorelik (I do not own this)

I know this is a lot of information. I want to personally suggest some of the first books I listed as they will give you a ‘general’ overview of Genghis Kahn, his descendants and the Mongols. If you need more information, please let me know and also, if you do pick up a book now and later want some advice on where to go next feel free to PM me and I’ll do my best.