India: A History — John Keay

Keay's single-volume history of India covers five thousand years from the Indus Valley civilisation to the end of the twentieth century. The challenge of such compression is the risk of reducing history to a list of dynasties, and Keay largely avoids it by remaining alert to the structural continuities — geographic, cultural, economic — that run beneath political change. Useful both as an introduction and as a reference for those who know parts of the story but want the whole arc.