The preparation of UPSC civil services is a journey in itself. The beauty of this journey is its scope. UPSC exam syllabus is such that you cannot read a list of standard IAS Preparation books and guides and say that the syllabus is covered. The UPSC preparation goes way beyond the reading of standard textbooks and guides.
IAS Preparation Books: 20 Non-Fiction Books list
- 10 Judgments That Changed Indiaby Zia Mody
- Advice and Dissent: My Life in Public Serviceby Y.V. Reddy
- Battles Half Won: India’s Improbable Democracyby Ashutosh Varshney
- Everybody Loves a Good Droughtby P. Sainath
- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
- How India Sees the World: From Kautilya to Modi: Kautilya to the 21st Centurywritten by Shyam Saran
- In Spite Of The Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern Indiaby Edward Luce
- India After Gandhi: The History Of The World’s Largest Democracyby Ramachandra Guha
- India Shastra: Reflections on the Nation in Our Timeby Shashi Tharoor
- India: Priorities for the Futureby Bimal Jalan
- Mistaken Modernity: India between Worldsby Dipankar Gupta
- No Full Stops in Indiaby Mark Tully
- Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century
- Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirationsby Nandan Nilekani
- Sapiens: by Yuval Noah Harari “Best in the list”
- The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identityby Amartya Sen
- The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharmaby Gurcharan Das
- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert 2015 Pulitzer Prize Winner
- The Wonder That Was Indiaby A.L. Basham
- Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Povertyby James A. Robinson Daron Acemoglu
Please note this IAS Preparation books list of non-fiction books is not an all exhaustive list. There are many other books which are as good as the ones given above. Hope this helps.
Happy Learning!
You are doing great job sir ……sir please provide shubhra ranjan mam’s coaching center quality enrichment notes of gs1 to gs4 in question answer format for 2018
A very good List.. Indeed.. Sapiens is the masterpiece. I have already read 6 books from above list. Going to read PAX INDICA by Shashi Tharoor…
Thanks for ur work.