A History of India

Academic in style, Stein's text provides a useful survey of Indian history from antiquity to the mid-1960s, with brief mention of later events such as the Indian intervention in the Pakistani civil war of 1970. Stein provides particularly good information on the rise of city-states like Mohenjo Daro in the Indus Valley around 3500 B.C. and on their collapse thanks to a combination of factors, including the deforestation of the Indus watershed for firewood and depletion of topsoil through too intensive agriculture. He discusses the evolution of the caste system, as much a strength historically as it was a weakness; the arrival of Islam in India in the 8th century A.D. and the subsequent development of specifically Indian forms of the religion, most notably Sufism; and the fortunes of the various European nations that laid claim to parts of the Indian subcontinent in the early modern era. --Gregory McNamee