Afghanistan

A blow-by-blow accounting of the military history of Afghanistan, labeled ‘The Graveyard of Empires' for a reason.

Tanner does more to illustrate the history of this region than any other work I've come upon. Cited references, thoroughly conducted research, and what appears to be years of difficult scavenging the world round for information. The information is presented clearly and without embellishment. Topping it all off, the author offers his personal suggestion of how the world should treat Afghanistan moving forward; note that this information finalizes circa 2002.

Overall, this is stellar, high-brow research with easily accessed information.

This was my first history book in a long time. And for that, it's very readable, with the right level of detail for a start-to-finish introduction of Afghanistan.

That said, I would dock one star for the description of battles and battle strategy; something that probably gets the history fans uppity, but isn't essential to the book itself and feels like the same thing (a push towards the center! flanking! surprise! general in the army!) repeated over and over again.