AFGHANISTAN: A New History, by Martin Ewans. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001, 239 pp., 12,600 yen (cloth)

The exorbitant price of Martin Ewans' "Afghanistan: A New History," coupled with the word "new" in the subtitle, is enough to attract attention. But as it turns out, the book is new only in the literal sense, not in offering a new approach to Afghan history. In fact, the author has taken what you might call the old "grammar school" approach to his subject, documenting the significant events, themes, dates, personages and, in this case, deadly intrigues that make up the historical experience of Afghanistan, in strict chronological order.

The book tracks the country's history from the third century B.C. all the way through to the Taliban's heady ascension to power in the 1990s, but focuses mainly on the past 300 years. Afghanistan's experiences in this latter period have been grisly, indeed. A disturbing and enormously depressing pattern emerges of warlord and clan battles, ethnic vengeances, banditry, plunder, rape, political betrayal, assassinations and massacres. This contributes to making the book difficult reading, aggravated in no small part by the complexity of detail that Ewans, the former head of the British Chancery in Afghanistan, offers regarding the intrigues of scheming powers, both internal and external.

The research is nevertheless prescient, and the book is a significant contribution to a largely ignored field; perhaps what you might call a "pioneer primer," a basis of factual research from which more speculative histories might be attempted later.