The absolute accuracy of Marco’s accounts is therefore secondary in relative importance to their ultimate effect of opening people’s eyes to a world beyond their imaginations. And yet, as Bergreen exhaustively illustrates, veracity remains at the heart of most current scholarship concerning the travels of Marco Polo. In fact, the last popular scholarly book on the subject before his was Frances Wood’s book, incredulously titled Did Marco Polo Go To China? Others, such as historian Johnathan Dresner, also come down firmly on the skeptical side with the opinion that Marco never traveled beyond his family’s trading post on the Black Sea. Both of these authors cite the many glaring omissions and inconsistencies in the various versions of Marco’s travels as proof that he didn’t do what he claims.
     Remarkably the debates have raged since before the original manuscript was even written in 1298. By then Marco was 43 and spending his days in a Genoese prison after ending up on the losing side of the Battle of Curzola between his hometown of Venice and their Genoese archrivals. He had returned to Venice with his father and uncle just three years earlier after twenty-four years on the road, dressed in Mongolian clothes, carrying a collection of strange artifacts: eye glasses, gunpowder, coal, paper money, and a solid gold bar that bore the seal of Kublai Khan and guaranteed safe passage to its bearer throughout the entire Mongolian Empire…. This was the same type of golden passport that his uncle and father had returned with twenty-seven years earlier after a sixteen-year journey through the Mongolian Empire that had led them to an unprecedented meeting with the Khan. Marco and his father and uncle also returned from this second journey with enough precious jewels sewn into their clothing to afford them a little palace of their very own and to keep them flush for the rest of their days. And still, almost everyone who heard their stories thought they were full of shit. I mean, really…black rocks that people burn for fuel? Paper money as a method for regulating the economies of an entire empire? An emperor with more wealth, power, and cultural sophistication than any European king? The worlds they described were so far beyond the imaginings of 13th century Europeans they might just as well have been suggesting that the world was actually round. About the only thing they did believe were the occasional stories about cannibalism. So doubtful were his fellow Venetians that Marco was actually given the lifelong nickname of “Il Milione”…as in, “The guy with a million bullshit stories to tell.”
     In Bergreen’s view, provincial small-mindedness was a great motivator for Marco to throw himself into the fray in the conflict with Genoa. It was a surefire way to give his detractors a provable conquest to talk about. Instead he found himself cast again into the position of the teller of incredible stories. His tales of adventure won him particular favor with his Genoese captors and attracted the attention of a fellow prisoner, an Arthurian Romance writer named Rustichello da Pisa.