Two works about a city on Earth: Buddha's Savage Peace article & book Kandy at War

Two recent finds about a city that I've been to - Kandy in Sri Lanka. First, a recent Atlantic article: Buddha's Savage Peace. From the article:

"Yet Buddhism, as Kandy demonstrates, is deeply materialistic and demands worship of solid objects, in a secure and sacred landscape that has required the protection of a military. There have been Buddhist military kingdoms—notably Kandy’s—just as there have been Christian and Islamic kingdoms of the sword. Buddhism can be, under the right circumstances, a blood-and-soil faith."

Read the rest of the article at Atlantic.

And another, a book that I just heard about (from the same Atlantic article) - Kandy at War: Indigenous Military Resistance to European Expansion in Sri Lanka 1594 to 1818. And here's a quote from the book (provided in the Atlantic article):

" “Like many other armies in peasant and tribal societies,” writes Channa Wickremesekera in Kandy at War: Indigenous Military Resistance to European Expansion in Sri Lanka 1594 to 1818 (2004), “the Kandyan army fought in loosely organized and highly mobile units depending on a flimsy logistical base,” making optimum use of its rugged, jungly terrain. It was very much like a 21st-century guerrilla insurgency, in other words—inspired, in this case, by the need to defend faith and homeland against heathen Europeans. The dense forest through which I had passed on my train ride constituted the graveyard of European attempts to reach Kandy, with many a Portuguese, Hollander, and Briton dying or giving up, exhausted and demoralized, afflicted by disease amid the cruel jungle..."

Here's the link the book on Amazon.

So that, I guess, is new material to add to my Sri Lanka related reading list.