Sunday Ignorance Blogging

Along with financial crises, another important issue about which I know nothing is India. Tyler Cowen strongly recommends India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, "a truly excellent book by Ramachandra Guha, well over 800 pages and yes it will be finished." Sounds like a good introduction to the subject. Reihan Salam, however, says he picked the book up on Cowen's recommendation "And it's bad. Really, really bad."

Reihan, however, concedes that "At present, there is embarrassingly little to choose from, which is perhaps the only good reason to recommend Guha's profoundly lackluster effort." Isaac Chotiner seems to be somewhere in the middle but closer to Cowen's view. Thinking about the depths of my ignorance on this subject, I realize that I don't even have any idea what the controversial issues in a history of India might be, so I'm really lost at sea.