Sir Percy Sykes first visited Central Asia some fifty years ago. Since then he has devoted constant study to that remote but strategically important part of the world, where from time to time he has held official appointments. The result is the first adequate treatise we have of the whole sweep of the history of Afghanistan from prehistoric times down to the present. There are several appendices, a bibliography, a detailed index and a large map in colors of Iran and Afghanistan folded in on the cover of volume two.