🧲 Books like this
Koh-I-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond
William Dalrymple, Anita Anand · back to the book
What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857
William Dalrymple · 560 pages
On a dark evening in November 1862, a cheap coffin is buried in eerie silence. There are no lamentations or panegyrics, for the British Commissioner in charge has insisted, 'No vesting will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Mughals rests.' This Mughal is Bahadur Shah Zafar II, one of the most tolerant and likeable of his remarkable dynasty who found himself leader of a violent and
The Discovery of India
Jawaharlal Nehru · 582 pages
Walk into the world of India and its civilization as seen by Pandit jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of Independent India
Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age
Arthur Herman · 736 pages
In this fascinating and meticulously researched book, bestselling historian Arthur Herman sheds new light on two of the most universally recognizable icons of the twentieth century, and reveals how their forty-year rivalry sealed the fate of India and the British Empire.They were born worlds apart: Winston Churchill to Britain's most glamorous aristocratic family, Mohandas Gandhi to a pious middle
The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan
Yasmin Khan · 251 pages
Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India
Lawrence James · 722 pages
"This is the story of one of the wonders of the modern world. In less than a hundred years, the British made themselves masters of India. They ruled it for another hundred, departing in 1947, leaving behind the independent states of India and Pakistan." "None of this, however, was planned. A series of emergencies in the eighteenth century transformed the East India Company into the most formidable
An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India
Shashi Tharoor · 360 pages
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
Mike Davis · 467 pages
The Fishing Fleet: Husband Hunting in the Raj
Anne de Courcy · 352 pages
"The fascinating and entertaining true stories of the young Victorian women on the hunt for husbands among the colonial businessmen and bureaucrats in the Raj"--
Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire
Alex von Tunzelmann · 440 pages
"The stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947 liberated 400 million Indians from the British Empire. One of the defining moments of world history had been brought about by a tiny number of people, including Jawaharlal Nehru, the fiery prime minister-to-be; Gandhi, the mystical figure who enthralled a nation; and Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, the glamorous but unlikely couple who had been dispatched to
A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport
Ramachandra Guha · 496 pages
Freedom at Midnight
Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre · 572 pages
The end of an empire. The birth of two nations. Seventy years ago, at midnight on August 14, 1947, the Union Jack began its final journey down the flagstaff of Viceroy’s House, New Delhi. A fifth of humanity claimed their independence from the greatest empire history has ever seen—but the price of freedom was high, as a nation erupted into riots and bloodshed, partition and war. Freedom at M
The Idea of India
Sunil Khilnani · 263 pages
"Our appreciation of the importance of India can only increase in light of current events in Asia and after the revelations about India's nuclear capabilities. This study addresses the paradoxes and ironies of this the world's largest democracy. Do the old ideas, or idea, of India still hold true - especially now that the country is in the hands of a very different kind of leadership? Can the orig
1808: The Flight of the Emperor: How a Weak Prince, a Mad Queen, and the British Navy Tricked Napoleon and Changed the New World
Laurentino Gomes · 321 pages
Incapable of fending off Napoleon, Portugal's Prince Regent Joao ruling since 1799 in the stead of his demented mother bluffed France with promises of surrender while signing a secret agreement with Britain to secure safe passage to Brazil for Joao and his entire court, comprising up to 15,000 people. On November 29, 1807, the fleet set sail from Lisbon, leaving Portugal at the mercy of Napoleon.
Daughter of Empire: My Life as a Mountbatten
Pamela Hicks · 262 pages
This magical memoir about a singular childhood in England and India by the daughter of Lord Louis and Edwina Mountbatten provides a privileged glimpse into the lives and loves of some of the twentieth century's leading figures.
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World
Niall Ferguson · 416 pages
In this book Niall Ferguson argues that the British Empire should be regarded not merely as vanished Victoriana but as the very cradle of modernity. Nearly all the key features of the twenty-first-century world can be traced back to the extraordinary expansion of Britain's economy, population, and culture from the seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth--economic globalization, the communicati
The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire
Susan Ronald · 471 pages
Dubbed the "pirate queen" by the Vatican and Spain's Philip II, Elizabeth I was feared and admired by her enemies. Extravagant, whimsical, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the epitome of power. Her visionary accomplishments were made possible by her daring merchants, gifted rapscallion adventurers, astronomer philosophers, and her stalwart Privy Council, including Sir William Cecil, Sir Francis Wal
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
King Leopold's Ghost
Adam Hochschild · 375 pages
In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian.
Imperial Spain: 1469-1716
J.H. Elliott · 431 pages
Since its first publication, J. H. Elliott's classic chronicle has become established as the most comprehensive, balanced, and accessible account of the dramatic rise and fall of imperial Spain. Now with a new preface by the author, this brilliant study unveils how a barren, impoverished, and isolated country became the greatest power on earth—and just as quickly fell into decline. At its greatest
Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggle With India
Joseph Lelyveld · 452 pages
Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Lelyveld, the former executive editor of The New York Times, will visit us to discuss his acclaimed new book, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India. This stirring book deepens our sense of Gandhi’s accomplishments and disappointments while examining the man as one of history’s most remarkable self-creations who oversaw a profound social and political t
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Nathaniel Philbrick · 461 pages
From the perilous ocean crossing to the shared bounty of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim settlement of New England has become enshrined as our most sacred national myth. Yet, as author Philbrick reveals, the true story of the Pilgrims is much more than the well-known tale of piety and sacrifice; it is a 55-year epic. The Mayflower's religious refugees arrived in Plymouth Harbor during a period
The Witches: Salem, 1692
Stacy Schiff · 512 pages
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra, the #1 national bestseller, unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials. It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an 80-year-old man crushed to death. The panic spread quickly, involv