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Recommendations based on The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857by William Dalrymple
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City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi
by William Dalrymple
Exploration of Delhi's vibrant culture, history and people over the course of a year.
Sparkling with irrepressible wit, City of Djinns peels back the layers of Delhi's centuries-old history, revealing an extraordinary array of characters along the way-from eunuchs to descendants of ... (Goodreads)
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy
by Ramachandra Guha
An expansive account of India's post-independence history, exploring its unique path to democracy.
A magisterial account of the pains, the struggles, the humiliations, and the glories of the world's largest and least likely democracy, Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi is a breathtaking ... (Goodreads)
The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire
by William Dalrymple
A historical account of the East India Company's rise to power and its devastating impact on India.
The story of how the East India Company took over large swaths of Asia, and the devastating results of the corporation running a country. In August 1765, the East India Company defeated the young ... (Goodreads)
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
by Suketu Mehta
An exploration of the diverse and complex city of Bombay, India.
A native of Bombay, Suketu Mehta gives us an insider’s view of this stunning metropolis. He approaches the city from unexpected angles, taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and ... (Goodreads)
Seven Years in Tibet
by Heinrich Harrer
Exploration of Tibet, told through the story of a man who escapes internment and lives in the region for seven years.
The book covers the escape of Harrer and his companion, Peter Aufschnaiter , from a British internment camp in India. , Harrer and Aufschnaiter then traveled across Tibet to Lhasa , the capital. Here ... (Wikipedia)
Wings of Fire: An Autobiography
by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
The inspiring story of India's 11th President, and his rise to the top in the face of adversity.
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, the son of a little-educated boat-owner in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, had an unparalleled career as a defence scientist, culminating in the highest civilian award of ... (Goodreads)
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
by Barbara W. Tuchman
A captivating narrative of the 14th century and its tumultuous history.
The 14th century gives us back two contradictory images: a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and a dark time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world plunged into a ... (Goodreads)
The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
by Bill Bryson
A humorous account of an American's journey through the British Isles, exploring its customs and culture.
The hilarious and loving sequel to a hilarious and loving classic of travel writing:, Notes from a Small Island, Bill Bryson’s valentine to his adopted country of England In 1995 Bill Bryson got into ... (Goodreads)
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
by William L. Shirer
The definitive story of Nazi Germany, its rise and fall, and its lasting impacts.
Hitler boasted that The Third Reich would last a thousand years. It lasted only 12. But those 12 years contained some of the most catastrophic events Western civilization has ever known. No other ... (Goodreads)
Gandhi: An Autobiography
by Mahatma Gandhi
An intimate account of Gandhi's life, philosophy, and political activism.
Mohandas K. Gandhi is one of the most inspiring figures of our time. In his classic autobiography he recounts the story of his life and how he developed his concept of active nonviolent resistance, ... (Goodreads)
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
by Jung Chang
A family memoir spanning decades of Chinese history, exploring the power of resilience.
The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten ... (Goodreads)
The Histories
by Herodotus
Exploration into the rise and fall of empires in the ancient world.
One of the masterpieces of classical literature, the "Histories" describes how a small and quarrelsome band of Greek city states united to repel the might of the Persian empire. But while this epic ... (Goodreads)
Notes from a Small Island
by Bill Bryson
A humorous travelogue of Bryson's final tour of Britain before moving to the US. He reflects on the quirks and charms of British life.
"Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain-which is to say, all of it." After nearly two decades spent on British soil, Bill Bryson - bestselling author of ... (Goodreads)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond
Tracing the origins of human civilizations through the lens of geography, technology, and biology.
"Diamond has written a book of remarkable scope ... one of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years." Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: ... (Goodreads)
A Long Way Home
by Saroo Brierley
Autobiography of a man's journey to find his family after becoming lost in India as a child.
When Saroo Brierley used Google Earth to find his long-lost home town half a world away, he made global headlines. Saroo had become lost on a train in India at the age of five. Not knowing the name ... (Goodreads)
Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
by Tim Butcher
An exploration of the Congo River, tracing its past and present history.
A compulsively readable account of a journey to the Congo — a country virtually inaccessible to the outside world — vividly told by a daring and adventurous journalist. Ever since Stanley first ... (Goodreads)
The Songlines
by Bruce Chatwin
A mix of travelogue, memoir, and fiction exploring the Aboriginal concept of songlines and their connection to the land.
In this extraordinary book, Bruce Chatwin has adapted a literary form common until the eighteenth century though rare in ours; a story of ideas in which two companions, traveling and talking ... (Goodreads)
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
A comprehensive study of the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, and the unique cabinet he assembled.
Winner of the Lincoln Prize Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from ... (Goodreads)
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
by Haruki Murakami
A psychological investigation of the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attack, exploring the impact on the Japanese people.
It was a clear spring day, Monday, March 20, 1995, when five members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo conducted chemical warfare on the Tokyo subway system using sarin, a poison gas twenty-six ... (Goodreads)
The God Delusion
by Richard Dawkins
Scientific exploration of the evidence for and against religious belief.
A preeminent scientist - and the world's most prominent atheist - asserts the irrationality of belief in God, and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11. With ... (Goodreads)
Paris, 1919: Six Months that Changed the World
by Margaret MacMillan
An account of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and its lasting effects on the modern world.
'Without question, Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919 is the most honest and engaging history ever written about those fateful months after World War I when the maps of Europe were redrawn. Brimming ... (Goodreads)
A People's History of the United States
by Howard Zinn
An examination of American history from a perspective of marginalized people.
In the book, Zinn presented a different side of history from the more traditional "fundamental nationalist glorification of country". Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen ... (Goodreads)
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
by Atul Gawande
An exploration of the human experience of mortality and the importance of end-of-life care.
In, Being Mortal, author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending Medicine has triumphed in modern ... (Goodreads)
Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East
by Scott Anderson
A biography of T.E. Lawrence, a British intelligence officer who played a key role in shaping the Middle East during World War I.
A thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential periods in 20th century history – the Arab Revolt and the secret “great game” to control the Middle East The Arab Revolt ... (Goodreads)
The Great Railway Bazaar
by Paul Theroux
A travelogue of a four-month journey by train from London to Tokyo, exploring the cultures and people encountered along the way.
First published in 1975, Paul Theroux's strange, unique, and hugely entertaining railway odyssey has become a modern classic of travel literature. Here Theroux recounts his early adventures on an ... (Goodreads)
The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
by Ernesto Che Guevara
A journey of exploration and discovery of South America, with a focus on its people and places.
The young Che Guevara’s lively and highly entertaining travel diary, now a popular movie and a New York Times bestseller. This new, expanded edition features exclusive, unpublished photos taken by ... (Goodreads)
The Prince
by Niccolò Machiavelli
A timeless political treatise on the art of acquiring and maintaining power.
Machiavelli needs to be looked at as he really was. Hence: Can Machiavelli, who makes the following observations, be Machiavellian as we understand the disparaging term? 1. So it is that to know the ... (Goodreads)
Flags of Our Fathers
by James D. Bradley
A tribute to the brave soldiers who raised the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima during WWII.
In this unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history, James Bradley has captured the glory, the triumph, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six men who ... (Goodreads)
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs
Exposes the flaws of urban planning, advocating for a more organic approach.
A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great ... (Goodreads)
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
A captivating overview of the natural sciences, spanning the history of the universe.
In Bryson's biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory ... (Goodreads)
