Golden Road
The author of “Return of a King” describes how India impacted and transformed culture and technology past and present.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
6mentions
6people
2024–2026years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- William Dalrymple's books are great reads. Makes reading history enjoyable. Highly recommend all his books, particularly his most recent 'The Golden Road'
- Good list. It does not include "Silk Roads" by Frankopan, which I agree with. That's a good read but much more a history of world trade (hence the plural) and strangely western-centric. I saw strangely because in the introduction Frankopan says he wanted to write a history from the point of view on central Asia, but its not that at all. Dalyrymple's "Golden Road" succeeds at Frankopan's objective and I found it much better in general. I don't want to sound too negative on "Silk Roads" but I think the title is subtly misleading if you want to learn about the trade general referred to as the Silk Road.
- Oh, I read that some years ago. I am not sure if it's very similar, but I can recommend Debt by David Graeber. It is an economic history of the world that deals with the use of credit and bullion in different societies during history.
Another book I enjoyed this year is The Golden Road by William Dalrymple. It explains the crucial cultural, economical, and religious influence that India had in Eurasia before and during the middle ages. This one is more similar to Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world, I believe.
- On top of my list of best books this year is The Golden Road by William Dalrymple
- Thanks for the link. Weirdly, the hardcover (not yet out) costs less than the paperback for the US. https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Road-Ancient-India-Transformed...
- Seems like the fact of a large India-Egypt trade link via the red sea was known atleast a year back, and specifically this evidence from Berenike. This [0] link describes the author William Dalrymple talking about it and also about his book [1] which is already out, which presumably covers this in more detail. A lot of Indian scholars are (re)discovering Indic history and we can expect much more of ancient India specific history to come out, which was unknown or has been forgotten over the ages, given the ancient nature of the Indian civilization.
[0] https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/economy/story/indias-anc... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Road-Ancient-India-Transformed...
