Customer Reviews

A History of Bangladesh

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I was for a long time on the lookout for a handy book on Bangladesh to give as gifts to my non-bengali friends; so that they appreciate the richness of the bengali culture. Now that this book is on the market I can safely update my friends on my country.
However, it is something magical with the author's erudition to summarize 2000-plus years of history into a 370 page book. He had passed without doubt. He started with the prehistory and ended with the 21st century - a feat that will not be overlooked by any careful reader. For the sake of conciseness, there may be several important omissions. But I shall argue for the author's side that given the breadth and depth of the history, also given the short time a modern reader has to his expense - this is the best trade-off that one can make without loosing conformity. An additional benefit are the pictures which are quite uncommon among the books on Bangladesh. It seems that they are carefully chosen from various parts of the real contemporary Bangladesh gives the reader a sense of the place, time and people.

A very convincing case for further study of Bangladesh, this book is a spot-on summary of the various threads of current scholarship on this fascinating country. Solidly researched and impeccably argued, by only critique would be that the book is organized maybe too neatly and things seem more cut-and-dry than they really are. Nonetheless, a great building block-- a comprehensive introduction.

It's a good read for a history of such a young country. The author does a great job of untangling the complex social and governmental structures in which Bangladesh arose from. He goes on to give a little bit more about the present day culture though more detail in this area would have been helpful. The book is peppered with interesting injections that coincide with the topic and spice up the linear plot. I had to read it since I'm going to live there, but I enjoyed it very much.