Though not without its issues, S. Frederick Starr's Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane is still one of the best reads I've had on the region. The language is approachable and readable, not too academic or dry, and presents some interesting new histographic interpretations.

A more specialized book, moreso a personal story/autobiography than a history textbook, but nonetheless incredibly moving and informative, is Mukhamet Shayakhmetov's The Silent Steppe, which covers the author's experiences and life in the USSR, especially during the Kazakh Famine, an often undiscussed tragedy of the region.

Finally, Rafis Abazov's Culture and Customs of the Central Asian Republics is a decent introductionary overview of, well, the culture and customs of Central Asia. Maybe not the most narratively engaging, it nonetheless serves as a good reading to become acquainted with the region and its peoples.

A couple years back I did a big paper on the then recently elected President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev. I have some very dry and academic readings on contemporary Uzbek history and politics if you're interested. It's mainly specialized readings concerning politics, diplomacy, economy, state-building, government, that sort of thing. If curious let me know and I can dig up my bibliography and list them.

A new book was released this year by Adeeb Khalid, Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present (2021). I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but am familiar with Khalid's work so think it may be worth reading. As the title suggests, it looks at Central Asia from the Russian annexations of the 1860s to now.

Khalid also wrote about the creation of Uzbekistan in the 1920s in his 2015 book Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR. This was a solid read, though very academic.

For an earlier look at what became Uzbekistan, I'd suggest The Modern Uzbeks: From the Fourteenth Century to the Present: A Cultural History by Edward A. Allworth (1990). It is an older book now, but Allworth was probably the preeminent scholar on Central Asia throughout the 1960s-1980s, and this is a detailed look at the Uzbeks in the pre-Russian era (though it can be quite dry at times).

If you're looking for a more introductory text, I can't recommend Dilip Hiro's Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran (2009) enough. While it focuses on the post-Soviet era, each chapter is self-contained on one country, and he gives a solid bibliography for further reading.