35. Return of a King by William DalrympleMasterful yet eminently readable account of the First Afghan War. Dalrymple uses a plethora of previously unplundered sources, some of which were even written in English but are resting in places too inaccessible for the average English-language historian, apparently. Additionally there are a lot of Indian ( Read more... )

11. Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William DalrympleDalrymple started out writing travel books and then branched into writing popular yet academic-quality histories of India. This book is closer to the former, in that he travels throughout India to look at its various religious traditions, but the individual people he ( Read more... )