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kenreid's review
3.0
Bit of a letdown after reading the story of China. I think the lack of context meant I was frequently lost, it was as if there was some prerequired reading I missed.
sci_cloudy's review
4.0
Wonderfully written and insightful. I especially enjoyed the fact that the era's of history get about a proportionate amount of pages. The book dies not focus disptoportionally on modern times, as so many others do. Always a nice touch: the many quotations from literature and interviews with locals. Brings the culture so much closer. However the book is a bit too short in some places. In 'The History of China' the balance between concise and easy to follow was better struck.
mh_books's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
marystevens's review against another edition
4.0
Very chatty. Not so good for getting a clear sense of the history and the issues. It works well with the BBC documentary on You Tube.
zoya7's review against another edition
2.0
Everything in this book was arranged very haphazardly, with no particular order.
It felt like the author took a bunch of history textbooks, skimmed through all of them, and then just wrote down whatever he remembered and decided to publish it.
I also felt like it didn't provide you with enough information about each topic and moved on too quickly.
I knew quite a bit about some topics, and in those particular topics, it seemed as though some facts were just missing or they were just skipped.
It felt like the author took a bunch of history textbooks, skimmed through all of them, and then just wrote down whatever he remembered and decided to publish it.
I also felt like it didn't provide you with enough information about each topic and moved on too quickly.
I knew quite a bit about some topics, and in those particular topics, it seemed as though some facts were just missing or they were just skipped.
alexbond3's review against another edition
3.0
I certainly didn't intend, in reading this book, to spend a couple hundred pages reading (or several hours listening) about the ancient archaeological history, and the pre-Middle Ages history of the Indian subcontinent. I would've loved for the final couple chapters, about the Hindu Nationalist movement, the Muslim League, Partition, Gandhi, Nehru, and the even more modern history of the BJP Hindu Nationalists sweeping into political power, to be the major subjects of the book. But this book is based on a TV series, so maybe it's my fault more than anything. Worth a read to get a very (very) comprehensive history of the subcontinent.
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