Story of Civilization - Part 1 & 2

Story of Civlization Part 1 and 2 by Arjun Dev, first published by NCERT in 1989, is perhaps the best book written on Indian History and World History for today's format of the UPSC Mains GS Paper 1. Beyond the facts, it brings out the conceptual aspects of History and more importantly interlinks World History with Indian History, which is precisely the nature of questions UPSC asks these days.