The Amsterdam Post
Book Choice
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The Great Game
by Peter Hopkirk
A thrilling story of the power struggles in 19C to build an Empire in Central Asia
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Buy The Great Game at Amazon.co.uk
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Buy The Great Game : The Struggle for Empire... at Amazon.com (USA)
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In a phrase coined by Captain Arthur Connolly of the East India Company before he was beheaded in Bokhara for spying in 1842, a "Great Game" was played between Tsarist Russia and Victorian England for supremacy in Central Asia.
At stake was the security of India, key to the wealth of the British Empire.
When play began early in the 19th century, the frontiers of the two imperial powers lay two thousand miles apart, across vast deserts and almost impassable mountain ranges; by the end, only 20 miles separated the two rivals.
Peter Hopkirk, a former reporter for The Times of London with wide experience of the region, tells an extraordinary story of ambition, intrigue, and military adventure.
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The Amsterdam Post
Book Choice
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The Afghans
by Willem Vogelsang
A comprehensive study of the history from the ancient times to the present of Afghanistan and its people by the Executive Secretary of the Research School of Asian, African and Amerindian Studies at Leiden University.
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Willem Vogelsang: The Afghans at Amazon.co.uk
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Willem Vogelsang: The Afghans at Amazon.com
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The book discusses a wide variety of subjects including the Indo-Iranian invasions of the second millennium BC, the Persian Achaemenids, Alexander the Great, the Islamic conquest, the Mongols and the rise of the kingdom of Afghanistan in the eighteenth century. The author pays special attention to recent developments, including the Soviet occupation of the country and subsequent events. Much of the description of the contemporary period is based on the author's own experience of events. The history also draws on a wide variety of other sources,
including archaeological, historical and linguistic materials.
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The Road to Monetary Union
