<p>19/ Finally, he&#39;s exposed the critical need for social and other kinds of history to round out these tales. One can almost ask: Did any of this matter? Is the long silence in the high school texts actually…okay? ↵</p>

<p>18/ Second, he&#39;s pointed to the importance and lack of archeology. So many great capitals are now fly-specked towns or villages, but underneath lie great stories. Without the archeology, we can only tell the stories the kings left of their claimed glories. ↵</p>

<p>17/ What Kanisetti has really done is set the stage for three very important things. First, he&#39;s set down in great detail (and yet very accessible prose) the records of those kingdoms, a point of departure for future scholars. ↵</p>

<p>16/ But ultimately, there&#39;s way too little of these. We get a sentence here and there speculating about the lives of commoners. There&#39;s a page or two about the queens. And the rest is just one damned thing after another. ↵</p>

<p>15/ Likewise, in the third part of the book, we learn about trade networks going both west (to the Arab worlds and Constantinople and, indirectly, to Europe) and east (to Indochina and China). Again, fascinating. Could have been expanded a lot more. ↵</p>

<p>14/ There are brief glimpses beyond this woeful chain of wars. Kanisetti&#39;s prose glistens when he speaks of the construction of Ellora temples, and you can feel his passion. But three pages later, we&#39;re back to the same-old. ↵</p>

<p>13/ Mostly, this would appear to be because of a very weak historical record. A lot of what Kanisetti recounts here is based on the royals&#39; own legacy stories, which serve only to glorify them, not (honestly and usefully) relate the lives of their subjects. ↵</p>

<p>12/ There is very, very little about anything *other* than these dynastic combats and successions, with the exception of the aforementioned discussion of language and religion. How did people live? What did they do? How was life? What was their culture? There&#39;s almost nothing. ↵</p>

<p>11/ The biggest is that it&#39;s mainly an account of one damned king after another: the title is FAR too accurate. A small group will gain power, rise, go to war, proclaim themselves kings-of-kings, rule for a generation or two, then lose…rinse and repeat with their victors. ↵</p>