India Great

No era is more pertinent to understanding how present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh evolved than the nearly 200 years of British rule. This colonial period was a time of deep change and transformation - for India and for the world. These 24 engrossing lectures offer you new perspectives on the history of European imperialism, on world economic history, on the features of British colonialism, and on the rich cultures of the Indian subcontinent.

This new edition of Yasmin Khan's reappraisal of the tumultuous India-Pakistan Partition features an introduction reflecting on the latest research and on ways in which commemoration of the Partition has changed, and considers the Partition in light of the current refugee crisis.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, a Native American empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in American history. This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches.

In this fast-paced epic, best-selling historian and master storyteller Arthur Herman spotlights two giants of the 20th century. Gandhi & Churchill shows how their 40-year rivalry revolutionized India and the British Empire, paving the way for a new era. Gandhi championed India's independence, Churchill the British Empire.

Whatever we may think of Alexander - whether Great or only lucky, a civilizer or a sociopath - most people do not regard him as a religious leader. And yet religion permeated all aspects of his career. When he used religion astutely, he and his army prospered. In Egypt, he performed the ceremonies needed to be pharaoh, and thus became a god as well as a priest. Babylon surrendered to him partly because he agreed to become a sacred king. When Alexander disregarded religion, he and his army suffered. In Iran, for instance, where he refused to be crowned and even destroyed a shrine, resistance against him mounted.

In the 19th century, the British and Russian empires were engaged in bitter rivalry for the acquisition of Southern Asian. Although India was the ultimate prize, most of the intrigue and action took place along its northern frontier in Afghanistan, Turkestan, and Tibet. Mapping the region and gaining knowledge of the enemy were crucial to the interests of both sides.

In The Taste of Empire, acclaimed historian Lizzie Collingham tells the story of how the British Empire's quest for food shaped the modern world. Told through 20 meals over the course of 450 years, from the Far East to the New World, Collingham explains how Africans taught Americans how to grow rice, how the East India Company turned opium into tea, and how Americans became the best-fed people in the world.

A definitive, comprehensive and engrossing chronicle of one of the greatest dynasties of the world—the Mughal—from its founder Babur to Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last of the clan the magnificent Mughal legacy is an inexhaustible source of inspiration to historians, writers, moviemakers, artists and ordinary mortals alike. Here is a fascinating and riveting saga that brings alive a spectacular bygone era—authentically and convincingly.

Full of illuminating anecdotes drawn from memoirs, correspondence, and government documents, The British in India weaves a rich tapestry of the everyday experiences of the Britons who found themselves in “the jewel in the crown” of the British Empire. David Gilmour captures the substance and texture of their work, home, and social lives, and illustrates how these transformed across the several centuries of British presence and rule in the subcontinent, from the East India Company’s first trading station in 1615 to the twilight of the Raj and Partition and Independence in 1947.

Kalidasa: The Great Poet and Playwright of Ancient India is a concise non-fiction book that explores the life and work of one of the most celebrated poets and playwrights in Indian history. Kalidasa's work is known for its beauty, insight, and enduring relevance. His plays and poems are still performed and studied today, and his influence can be seen in a wide range of fields, from literature and art to philosophy and religion. This book provides a comprehensive overview of Kalidasa's body of work, including his famous plays Abhijnanashakuntalam and Vikramōrvaśīyam, as well as his epic ...

A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments - his success in seizing India’s imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country’s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor.

From the first agricultural settlement more than 7,000 years ago to the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great and the vast Maurya Empire, ancient India tells a story interweaved with captivating legends and cultural legacy.  

Set in Calcutta, London, the glacier-locked wilds of the Karakoram, and on Everest itself, The Last Englishmen is also the story of a generation. The cast of this exhilarating drama includes Indian and English writers and artists, explorers and Communist spies, Die Hards and Indian nationalists, political rogues and police informers. Key among them is a highborn Bengali poet named Sudhin Datta, a melancholy soul torn, like many of his generation, between hatred of the British Empire and a deep love of European literature, whose life would be upended by the arrival of war on his Calcutta doorstep.

Highly successful people live and swear by certain time-tested rules which they set for themselves. Marketing wizard Suhel Seth and business journalist Sunny Sen distil learnings from 21 of the most influential business leaders of this century on what it takes to create some of the biggest and most powerful companies of not only India, but also of the world.

Founded at the dawn of the 17th century as European nations were establishing global empires, the English East India Company would become a vital part of burgeoning British supremacy. Begun as a joint-stock company for trade with the East Indies, this organization would evolve into one of the world's first capitalistic corporations.

Home to the world’s most ancient religions and practices, India is indeed a nation enriched with a fascinating history. The subcontinent has hosted a legion of great empires, monumental battles, religions, cultures, foreign invasions, and much more. From prehistoric to modern, 50 of the most formative eras of the subcontinent are discussed. Relating the zenith and nadir of India’s past, this audiobook provides crisp and riveting accounts of one of the world’s most ancient nations.

The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles, and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company's practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today.

In November 1970, a storm set a collision course with the most densely populated coastline on Earth. Over the course of just a few hours, the Great Bhola Cyclone would kill 500,000 people and begin a chain reaction of turmoil, genocide, and war. The Vortex is the dramatic story of how that storm sparked a country to revolution.

At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the British Empire withdrew from India, igniting the exhilaration and turmoil of a newly free society. In this vivid, atmospheric popular history, Alex von Tunzelmann chronicles these times through the most prominent figures.

During the last centuries of the first millennium BCE, most of the Mediterranean basin and the Near East were either directly or indirectly under the influence of Hellenism. The Greeks spread their ideas to Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia and attempted to unify all of the peoples of those regions under one government. Although some of the Hellenistic kingdoms proved to be powerful in their own rights -- especially Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid Empire.