"Sometimes it's not what you remember" Topic

I was in one of my favorite book stores the other day, Twice Sold Tales in Farmington Maine, and I had them order a copy of A.L Basham's "The Wonder that Was India." This was a basic textbook for my South Asian History course back in my undergraduate days. It's always been a sideline of mine. The book went out of my possession and I found an opportunity to get a new copy.

The book is as good as it ever was, but I guess I have changed. Passages that used to thrill me with tales of Kings and Wars and city states rising and falling like tenpins no longer thrills. I find a small voice in the back of my head musing on the misery and suffering these constant wars must have caused. I find myself wanting to move on to the tracing of art and literature, and the more tangible remnants of civilization.

Of course I started out as military historian all those years ago and about halfway in the last 55 years I started to become a cultural historian.

But I still recommend the book as an excellent source for the history of the sub continent before the arrival of the Raj.