After seeing Basharat Peer read from this book during a recent academic event at Stanford University, getting it and reading the whole thing was inevitable. And very rewarding: a powerful, well-written, insightful narrative of how we got to today's Kashmir crisis from someone who grew up in a village as it all unfolded.Read more

Another masterful book by William Dalrymple. This time he examines the lives of extraordinary people who have chosen the path of extreme religious devotion. The people are amazing, the stories intense celebrations of the human spirit that each life represents.Read more

Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier
by Shah Mahmoud Hanifi
Columbia University Press e-book, 2008

There are two unusual things about this work.Read more

For lovers of old Karachi, a superb visual history of the city during the Raj. Old images and vintage text on the city and its businesses and prominent landmarks a century ago.Read more

Author: Ken Jacobson
Publisher: Bernard Quaritch
Binding: Hardcover, 308 pgs.
There is only one photograph from India in this exemplary photographic history of the Middle East from Algeria to Syria in the 19th and early 20 centuries.Read more

Although there is nothing here about India, Photo Icons is one of the best single books on photography available today. Each of its 20 well-written essays decodes a single historical photograph using fresh historical research and profound insight.Read more

Author: Maurice Isserman and Stuart Weaver
Publisher: Yale University Press, 2008
Binding: Hardcover, 592 pages
An exceptionally gripping and well-written history of mountaineering in the subcontinent from the mid-19th century. Major expeditions are covered in detail, and the book is well illustrated with vintage photographs.Read more

This slim but fascinating volume by a Professor at Erasmus University in the Netherlands uses photographs, cabinet cards, postcards and other material to illustrate the lives of Indians in East Africa from the late 19th through early 20th century.Read more

Author: Mike David
Publisher: Verso, 2002
Binding: Softcover, 464 pages

An eye-opening book about how policies, technologies and weather patterns combined to bring about some of the enormous famines that became endemic to India in the second half of the 19th century.Read more

A comprehensive look into the lives and minds of the 1,000 or so strong British elite who ruled India during the Raj. The author has studied the characters involved for a long time. Lots of good anecdotes and glimpses into their successes and motivations. Light on the excesses and problems they left behind.Read more