[1][2] The author is Kim A. Wagner, who lectures on colonial India and the British Empire at Queen Mary, University of London.

[1][3] The book has 360 pages, 26 black and white illustrations, four maps and 12 chapters preceded by an introduction and a section on acknowledgements.

[1][4] Wagner explains that "the Amritsar Massacre isn’t understood very well",[5] particularly in the absence of any photographs of the 13 April 1919 and with a significant variation in British and Indian accounts of how many were killed and how and why it happened.

Mahatma Gandhi responded by proposing that all Indians oppose the Act and make a Satyagraha pledge, a promise to resist without using violence.

On that day, Wagner explained, “European civilians had been killed by Indian rioters, and white women had been attacked by brown men”,[5] for the first time since 1857.

However, the ban was not widely acknowledged and “many either unaware of the proclamation or not believing that the British would actually resort to violence, proceeded to announce a meeting at the Jallianwala Bagh that would take place on April 13, 1919”.

[5] The crowd at Jallianwalla Bagh was composed of mainly men and many from out of town, making up to 20,000 people, who had mostly come to celebrate a religious festival.

Instead, the British authorities imposed curfews, a crawling order and martial law and those suspected of being involved in the 10 April riots were arrested and tortured.

[5] Using primary sources to gather evidence, Wagner has clarified that the book aims to dispel a number of myths surrounding the events of the massacre in Amritsar on 13 April 1919.

[5] In 2019, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh,[1] the book triggered responses in a number of publications including The Spectator by William Dalrymple, who noted that Wagner had used extensive primary sources in his research and "almost every sentence is footnoted — gets as close as we are ever likely to get to the truth of what happened in Jallianwalla Bagh.

[8] Reporting in The Times, Tunku Varadarajan agreed with Wagner that the book is a "a microhistory of a global event", aimed at neither those with "Raj nostalgia or Indian Nationalism".