The return of a king
Examines the mid-19th-century Afghan war as a tragic result of neocolonial ambition, cultural collision and hubris, drawing on previously untapped primary sources to explore such topics as the reestablishment of a puppet-leader Shah, the conflict's brutal human toll and the similarities between the war and present-day challenges.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
5mentions
5people
2015–2026years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Besides the sketches, she has written extensively about Indian rulers at the time (e.g. Ranjit Singh). If you found this interesting, you would love the Empire Podcast... I believe they talk about Emily in the episode on Afghanistan (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/79-invading-afghanista...); Dalrymple's book on the subject (Return of a King, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_of_a_King) is also a masterfully well researched, delightful read.
- Yup, that podcast is incredible and, although it’s hard to pick his best book, ‘Return of a King’ is astonishing.
- This was an interesting period of history, and I'm really looking forward to reading Kilt For Hire! I can't believe there's a book about Gardener now.
I always try to make a pair of books for a period I'm interested in: one comprehensive history of the major events and people of the period, and one personal story. (For instance, the late 1800s/early 1900s incl WW1, I have "Dreadnought" by RKM and "Storm of Steel" by Junger).
For the time before and during the first Afghan War, I can highly recommend:
1) Maybe the best-researched, most vivid, and most comprehensive overall telling of the before, during and after of the First Afghan War: the book Return of a King, by Dalrymple. It incorporates a lot of surprisingly-recently-translated documents from libraries in modern-day Pakistan, which became more interesting to historians post-2001.
2) A personal story, that of the American Josiah Harlan, the book Josiah The Great. Like Gardener was a wanderer and soldier of fortune, but who unlike Gardener was the inspiration for Kipling's short story written after the publication of the first part of his memoirs (and later movie with M. Caine and S. Connery). His story has a lot of detail, because he was a weird duck who kept to himself, brought a personal library with him, and took extensive notes for his memoirs. In fact he's a high-quality primary source in book (1). As a result, there's a lot of detail. You can really feel the personal danger Harlan was in, and just how often he bluffed his way through situations that could easily have killed him.
- Return of a King (William Dalrymple 2013) - A book about the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century. To paraphrase Mark Twain: History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes
Being Mortal (Atul Gawande, 2014) - Powerful book about old age and confronting the mortality of our loved ones
The Dark Forest (Cixin Liu, 2014) - Wonderful science fiction from China
The Peripheral (William Gibson, 2015) - Bleak, near future science fiction.
The Water Knife (Paolo Bacigalupi, 2015) - More bleak, near future science fiction.
- Only this evening I was listening to Tim Hartford's Cautionary Tales podcast episode which refers to the book The Return of a King. It's a really good episode - https://timharford.com/2021/04/cautionary-tales-masterly-ina...
