Examines the life of one of the principal intellectual architects of British colonial rule in South Asia.

Traces the political history of Afghanistan from the sixteenth century to the present, looking at what has united the people as well as the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them.

This comprehensive history of Kandahar uses unpublished and fugitive sources to provide a detailed picture of the geographical layout and political, social, ethnic, religious, and economic life in Afghanistan’s second largest city throughout the nineteenth century.

The untold story of the nineteenth-century American Quaker who tried to build a kingdom in Afghanistan: “A thrilling real-life yarn.” —Booklist In the year 1838, a young adventurer, surrounded by his native troops and mounted on an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush in the mountainous wilds of Afghanistan. He declared himself Prince of Ghor, Lord of the Hazarahs, spiritual and military heir to Alexander the Great. The true story of Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker and the first American ever to enter Afghanistan, has never been told before, yet the life and writings of this extraordinary man echo down the centuries. This “riveting, scrupulously researched” book reveals the full history behind the renowned Rudyard Kipling short story and John Huston’s film classic (The New York Times Book Review). “One of the most remarkable discoveries in the history of biography.” —The New York Review of Books “Macintyre recounts Harlan’s travels with dispatch, and draws on unpublished journals to let his subject’s voice seep through.” —The New Yorker “Here is a writer who seems as taken as I am with crackpottery, delusion, grandiosity, chicanery, and impersonation, but who manages to write about it all with amused restraint, without, that is, the air of the ogler.” —The Boston Globe “Macintyre gives readers both Harlan’s story and a thought-provoking perspective on the history of superpower intervention in Afghanistan . . . Harlan’s story alone is fascinating, but its resonance with modern-day struggles—Harlan urging the British to try ‘fiscal diplomacy’ (i.e., gold) instead of ‘invading and subjugating an unoffending people’—makes it compelling.” —Publishers Weekly