As South Asia bureau chief for The Washington Post, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Steve Coll journeyed through the turbulent nations of modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Afghanistan. On the Grand Trunk Road brings together his journalistic travels and reveals the color and complexity of today's South Asia.This is a land where the tenth and twentieth centuries uneasily intermix, where new technology and mass communication are spurring social change at breakneck speed. Torn by bloody religious and ethnic conflicts, shaken by socialism's failures and economic upheaval, South Asia, home to more than a billion of the world's people, is facing challenges as never before.Steve Coll puts a human face on these larger issues. We ride with hard-drinking Sikh truck drivers along the dangerous 900-mile Grand Trunk Road, encounter too closely Sri Lanka's military death squads; visit with impoverished rural villagers frustrated by useless government aid programs; wander the euphoric streets of revolutionary Nepal. He takes us along as he investigates the mysterious plane crash that killed the leader of Pakistan and watches Islamic holy warriors overrun the capital of Afghanistan. Engaging, insightful, knowledgeable, Coll guides us across this contemporary landscape and into its depths, seeking out the teenage revolutionaries, corpulent politicians, spies, princes, ambitious businessmen, upwardly mobile untouchables, cynical gurus, thieves, and civil servants who live on the edges of South Asia's conflict and change - and who will define the future of this neglected and misunderstood region. Vibrant and important, On the Grand Trunk Road is journalism of the best kind. Read Less