This new edition brings Stanley Wolpert's brilliantly succinct and accessible introduction to India completely up to date for a new generation of readers, travelers, and students. In crisp detail, Wolpert gives a panoramic overview of the continent on which the world's most fascinating ancient civilization gave birth to one of its most complex modern democratic nations. India now includes new sections on the country's current global economic development, the recent national elections, and on its international relations, including those with Pakistan, China, Sri Lanka, and the United States, India's new strategic global partner. Praise for previous editions: "To all of us who delightedly and sometimes repetitively call ourselves Old India hands, Stanley Wolpert is the acknowledged authority. This book tells why. Indian history, art, culture, and contemporary politics are here in accurate, wide-ranging, and lucid prose."-John Kenneth Galbraith "Wolpert understands India. . . . . Fluent, wide-ranging and often wise, this volume is a useful addition to a shelf of books on India."--Washington Post Book World "A superb distillation of a lifetime's learning by UCLA's great historian of India. Refreshingly concrete and detailed, [and] vibrantly written, Wolpert's overview repeatedly succeeds at explaining a culture that gave us little things like the decimal system, chess, cotton cloth, meditation, and two religions called Buddhism and Hinduism."--Philadelphia Inquirer "If one were to read a single book about India in a lifetime, this should be it."--Library Journal