Tom Fleming.
Taxi to Tashkent: Two Years with the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan.
www.iUniverse.com, 2007.
Book information: book website, Amazon.com.
Fleming served in Uzbekistan from January 2003 through February 2005. As the subtitle indicates, the book is about his personal experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer: his personal impressions, his travels, and his interactions with Uzbeks, other Peace Corps volunteers, and bureaucrats (Peace Corps and Uzbek). Although Fleming provides small amounts of context of the history, culture, geography, etc. of Uzbekistan, this book is a Peace Corps memoir and not a systematic study of Uzbekistan.
Large scale geopolitical events of last couple decades (collapse of the USSR, economic rise of China, and most especially U.S. (and other nations') corporations' access or lack thereof to the unexploited hydrocarbon resources of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia) have brought this region to the forefront of attention of U.S. policymakers, though the U.S. public is largely ignorant of this (and of the relationship of those geopolitical factors in motivating the ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan). One of the few books I am aware of that directly discusses these issues, expecially the geopolitics of hydrocarbon resources in Central Asia, is Pepe Escobar's Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (2006). A little looking yields some others that sound promising: The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia (2004) by Lutz Kleveman; Uzbekistan and the United States: Authoritarianism, Islamism and Washington's New Security Agenda (2005) by Shahram Akbarzadeh; Central Asia's Second Chance (2005) by Martha Brill Olcott.
[Addendum/correction, 6 Aug 2008: Ahmed Rashid's well known book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (2000) contains extensive discussion of the politics surrounding Central Asian hydrocarbon resources and Western oil companies' attempts to build pipelines in the region.]
Fleming observes (pages 82-83) that before he left for Uzbekistan there were few books available in the U.S. on the recent history of Uzbekistan and Central Asia; he mentions/recommends the works of Colin Thubron and Peter Hopkirk, but found the Lonely Planet guide to Central Asia "chockfull of misinformation." The problem of that book dearth appears to have improved; see the Amazon.com books associated with those of Kleveman, Akbarzadeh, and Olcott mentioned above.
I think many people interested in Uzbekistan and Central Asia (especially at an introductory level), or in volunteering for the Peace Corps regardless of region, will find this book insightful and worth their time. It is particularly strong in describing the Uzbek people at a personal level.