Pakistan is a huge, populous and diverse nation that has the curious distinction of having been suddenly born in 1947, and it has been an aggressive and implacable neighbor of India.

Most Indians do not understand Pakistan or Pakistanis. Many tend to look at the similarities and remark, "Pakistanis are just like us". That may appear true but it is important to understand that Pakistanis do not feel like Indians and do not like to say "Indians are just like us". In fact Pakistanis have spent all those decades since independence trying to show how Pakistan is not like India. And in the intervening years Pakistan, Pakistani institutions and Pakistanis have developed certain unique and recognizable defining features. While these features have been noted time and again by innumerable people in a large number of books, newspaper reports and magazines, no effort been made to collect this information and put it all together between the covers of a single book.

More that anything else, this book can be considered a Review of the literature on Pakistan. In the field of medical research, a Review of the literature is often used to collect and collate information about a disease from various sources. Such a review collects up all the available information about a given disease from all the medical papers available on the subject and consolidates the information in one document. That document then serves as a comprehensive reference point for information about the subject.