The time is certainly ripe for a new history of Afghanistan. Nearly twenty-five years of war have laid bare previously hidden contestation of the meaning of past events. Intellectuals, either in exile or under new (if short-lived) authorities not bound to the orthodoxies of the old regime, have reissued old works and penned new ones, proposing new interpretations and presenting new facts. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to the release of new documents and narratives, as well.