On India

This book is kinda terrible. The beginning was ok, and the end was decent, but everything after Harappa and before the Mughals was absolutely brutal to read. This makes some sense given that India has never been a unified state until independence, although it did come close under the Mughals and the British Raj. Because of India’s disunity, it is difficult to write a historical narrative (especially when earlier documents are scattered, if extant at all). But, surely there would have been some better way to frame this book in a way where it has meaning rather than a series of disjointed figures and events only linked together by their Indian-ness.

I’ll find something else to read to fill in the gaps, and I recommend staying away from this one.