A History of India by Michael H. Fisher

A History of India by Michael H. Fisher

I think that India proved to be too vast and complicated for a single Great Courses Text. Fisher gives a good try starting in prehistory and going to the present day, but I always felt like he was jumping around and rarely making connections between his topics. The first sixteen lectures are a highlights reel of events before the sixteenth century. Then he slows down a little, but I still felt like we were leapfrogging through history trying to cover just a smattering of events in the last five hundred years. The best part of the course focused on the twentieth century—especially when Fisher looks at India and Pakistan after they win their freedom from Britain. If nothing else, Fisher shows just how complex the subcontinent and its peoples truly are.