Description
William Dalrymple's magisterial account of the First Anglo-Afghan War—following the British Empire's catastrophic attempt to install a puppet king in Kabul in the 1830s and the disaster that followed—is simultaneously the finest single-volume history of that conflict and the most relevant popular history produced about Afghanistan for a contemporary audience. Written with the narrative brilliance and the scholarly authority that have made him the preeminent popular historian of South Asia, this is essential reading for every person who wants to understand both Afghan history and the repeated failure of foreign powers to understand it. A masterwork.
