In the 1160s, on the floodplains of the Onon River in northeastern Mongolia, a boy named Tamujin was born. As a young man, he organized an alliance of rival tribes among those of the grasslands north of the Gobi desert. Years later, as the fierce warrior-leader Genghis Khan, he led a vast army of nomads out of the grasslands, across deserts and against societies who had the misfortune to share time and space with the all-powerful Mongols