--- On Fri, 21/8/09, Aadisht Khanna <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Aadisht Khanna <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [silk] India: A History by John Keay To: [email protected] Date: Friday, 21 August, 2009, 11:16 AM On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Biju Chacko <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm currently reading $SUBJECT. I've never actually studied Indian > history or read much Indian history so I can't tell if it has any > biases. It's fairly interesting though. Can anyone comment it's slant > or lack thereof? > I didn't notice any when I read it (then again, I've not read much so I have very little to compare it against). The only thing I had to complain about in that book was not bias but that the attempt to cover four thousand years of history in a paperback made the book a quick skim through facts and slightly short on analysis/ narrative. That actually strips out bias. His other books are not as skimmish and *The Spice Route* is particularly good. *India Discovered* is also more detailed but gets a little fanboyish about the original Orientals. Nowhere near as much as William Dalrymple though. -- Aadisht Khanna Address for mailing lists: [email protected] Personal address: [email protected] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dalrymple as historian? Well, perhaps, in the sense that Barbara Tuchman was an historian, or Alan Bullock was an historian. There was a dividing line between historians and writers of popular historical pieces. Admittedly it is disappearing very fast now. Even so, Dalrymple's work is not to be considered as history. He remains eminently readable, and he does a a lot of original research. What is missing is the gruelling process of peer review through publication in academic journals, or internal publication and consideration in academic institutions.
