Finally, Some Helpful Passages on India

If you're an investor, you need to know about India. Unfortunately, before Riding the Indian Tiger came out, snappy, all-in-one primers on India's past, present and future had been hard to come by.

The list of companies that do business with India includes the likes of Sony (SNE Quote), Gap (GPS Quote), Microsoft (MSFT Quote), General Electric (GE Quote) and Wal-Mart(WMT Quote).

But the list of investors with experience in India, who know its regions, tendencies and opportunities, is short. And much of what is written about the country falls into one of two unhelpful categories: political bombast declaring that India is ever-powerful and will sink America, and the business hype jobs that call India a source of evergreen profit for the average investor.

What has seemed lacking, until now, is a balanced and digestible overview that tells a bit about India's history, a bit about its regions, a bit about how it compares with China and thoughts on its future. ...