Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, was a great explorer of far and unfamiliar lands. He traveled the world in order to find things that no one else had seen—but what did he really discover? The stories that he told upon his return to his homeland of the Republic of Venice were so unusual that his fellow compatriots often had a hard time believing him. When he described things such as paper money, gun powder, and coal, these were still so far out of the daily routine of the west that they seemed utterly bizarre to his contemporaries. But even now that Marco Polo’s discoveries are less exotic and more commonplace, do we truly understand what it was that he uncovered? This book will delve deep into the life and legend of Marco Polo.