The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World

"Dalrymple is an energetic and learned historian of India, but this is the first of his books to delve into the country's ancient history."

"Although the book is dense with far-flung names, dates, places, and ideas, Dalrymple's writing is always animated, enlivened by color plates that allow readers to readily envision the sights evoked here."

"Dalrymple must get credit for flying the flag of the land that has been lucky enough to become his obsession."

"Yet it's also a deeply personal work."

"The struggle of ideas in modern India is not so much between right- and left-leaning historians, but between those who write about the past and those who aspire to rewrite the past."

"An absorbingly literary history, a tale of tales, and, in Dalrymple's telling, it was most notably through the dissemination of stories — including ideas and doctrines given narrative form ..."

"Dalrymple has made a heroic effort to traverse this difficult terrain, presenting a beautifully written book, replete with colourful individuals, fascinating anecdotes, little-known facts and dramatic events, all the while telling a story hitherto apparently untold ..."

"Comprehensive and meticulously researched ..."

"Although the story that Dalrymple tells has long been the stuff of college classrooms, his great achievement is in assembling the disparate fragments of early India's engagements across the continent into a delightfully readable whole ..."