BJS
It is hard to write a truly interesting, smoothly flowing history of someplace, probably because history doesn't flow smoothly. This book does a creditable job of outlining the history of a poorly understood area of the world, one that we do need to understand better. One comes away from this book with a better perspective & some hope for the future of these troubled people. Unfortunately the narrator is not quite up to the quality of writing. Oddly, while he doesn't stumble over most of the Afghan names, he does mispronounce a number of English words. He also has a frustrating habit of reading phrases as whole sentences which makes it hard to follow at times. As an introductory outline to the country's history and main players, this book serves its purpose.