The Age of Pandemics 1817-1920: how they shaped india & the world
Chinmay Tumbe
HarperCollins
Rs.318; Pages 292
The novel Coronavirus, aka Covid-19 pandemic which originated in neighbouring People’s Republic of China in November 2019, is still spreading contagion and death nationwide — and around the world.
In India, the national response has experienced play out of […]
THE FATE OF BUTTERFLIES
Nayantara Sahgal
SPEAKING TIGER
Rs.455, Pages 144
The Fate ofButterflies by the redoubtable Nayantara Sahgal is another testimonial to her versatile imagination. Interweaving personal and the political like many of Sahgal’s earlier books, this novel narrates a history of the present from a fast receding liberal-secular perspective.
INDIA’S POWER ELITE — CLASS, CASTE AND A CULTURAL REVOLUTION
Sanjaya Baru
PENGUIN
Rs.699; Pages 228 pp
Currently, a Delhi-based policy analyst, writer and columnist, Sanjaya Baru has excellent credentials to write this interestingly titled book. In his eventful, and yet sure to be more productive life he has acquired rich and valuable insights into post-independence […]
Bahawalpur: The Kingdom That Vanished – Anabel Loyd, Vintage/ Penguin Rs.959 Pages 28
Anabel Loyd’s Bahawalpur is an account of the history of this princely state of the late colonial period, and its territories after accession to Pakistan when it ceased to exist as a distinct political entity. The processes whereby […]
India Tomorrow: Conversations with the next generation of political leaders Pradeep Chhibber & Harsh Shah, Oxford University Press Rs.850 Pages 276
This book is a compilation of interviews with some of India’s prominent young politicians who are touted as the next generation of Indian politics. In interviewing these politicians, the authors begin […]
One of the most prominently featured characters in Barbara Demick’s new book is called Gonpo. Born in 1950, a year after Mao Zedong declared a ‘New China’, she is the daughter of a King in Amdo, a region on the eastern end of the Tibetan Plateau in what is modern-day Sichuan. […]
If Shashi Tharoor, Member of Parliament and author of 16 masterly English language non-fiction books of deep erudition and three fiction titles, had been born a white Christian American, he would surely have completed at least one term in the White House by now.
A successful politcian, accomplished literateur, exceptional wordsmith skilled in the cut […]
The Chipko movement: A people’s history; Shekhar Pathak Orient Blackswan; Rs.895; Pages 390
In the year 1974, when the womenfolk and children of village Reni, under the leadership of the gutsy Gaura Devi, were chasing away labour contractors and their crony forest officials bent upon felling trees for commercial exploitation, writing perhaps […]
My good school: Where passion meets education; Sandeep Dutt Rupa publications; Rs.295; Pages 169
The objective of this first edition of My Good School authored by Dehradun-based Sandeep Dutt, described as a school coach, bookseller, runner, mountaineer and social entrepreneur with the mission “to help schools deliver better”, is to advise parents to choose quality […]
A ringside seat to history: An autobiography; Pascal Alan Nazareth; Konark publishers; Rs.800; Pages 256
Amitabha Bhattacharya (The Book Review)
What exactly does an ambassador or a career diplomat do? Is the job about enjoying a comfortable life, mouthing high sounding ideals and engaging in protocol and immigration issues? How much scope is there for individual initiatives […]
This novel has several interwoven themes — communities turning against each other, exploitation of women and the concept of nationhood. Three women bring them alive
The radiance of a thousand suns; Manreet Sodhi Someshwar; Harper Collins Rs.499; Pages 499
In July 1947 an accomplished lawyer from England made his first, and […]
Right until 1980 the economies of China and India were on a par. This brilliant book details and explains the explosive growth of China and why India is an also ran
India’s China challenge; Ananth Krishnan; Harper Colllins Rs.417; Pages 420
Every true nationalist with genuine interest in enabling the greater good of the greatest […]
Uncivil city: Ecology, equity & the commons in Delhi Amita Baviskar; Sage/Yoda Rs.1,195; Pages 243
– Susan Visvanathan (The Book Review)
Amita Baviskar brings careful and serious considerations to the city of Delhi and its environs, including Gurgaon, giving us revealing insights into this fast-growing urban constellation plagued by toxic pollution. She looks at the way a […]
Politics of precarity: Gendered subjects and the health care industry in contemporary Kolkata Panchali Ray; Oxford University Press Rs.1,250; Pages 260
– Mohan Rao (The Book Review)
The Covid-19 pandemic is here to stay and we have to learn to live with it. In addition to the many things the pandemic has exposed — neglect of […]
Gandhi’s Hinduism — The struggle against Jinnah’s Islam; M.J. Akbar; Bloomsbury; Rs.699; 414 pp
– Dilip Thakore
This compelling narrative tracking events to the final run-up to independence and partition of the subcontinent has suffered a media blackout, despite being authored by media supernova M.J. Akbar, (Sunday, The Telegraph, Kolkata, Asian Age and author of several contemporary […]
China’s transformation: The success story & the success trap; Manoranjan Mohanty; sage publications; Rs.1,195; Pages 376
– Ravi Bhoothalingam (The Book Review)
If you had to pick just one book to read on a desert island (or more realistically, during a Covid-19 lockdown) that would give you an authoritative and readable account of China’s rise to global […]
Small days and nights – Tishani Doshi; W.W. Norton & Company; Rs.350; Pages 261
Small Days and Nights is a rich work of fiction with an inter-racial love story, probably a portrait of the author’s own parents, a Welsh mother and an Indian, Gujarati father. It impresses by its radical exploring of the root idea of […]
Think on these things – J. Krishnamurti; Krishnamurti Foundation; Rs.250; Pages 267
Legendary philosopher, spiritual guru, educationist and one of the world’s pioneer environmentalists Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895- 1986) travelled the world for six decades, delivering illuminating commentaries on the scriptures, philosophy and education. The wisdom he shared, much of which was compiled in the form of […]
The Lost Decade (2008-18): How India’s Growth Story Devolved into Growth without a Story; Puja Mehra; Penguin random house; Rs.527 Pages 240
The Indian economy has been lurching from crisis to crisis for more than a decade. The latest crisis is still unfolding with the Covid-19 pandemic prompting a countrywide lockdown of factories and business establishments, […]
Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo; Juggernaut; Rs.393; Pages 320
This extraordinary volume, even though it’s authored by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, distinguished professors at the globally top-ranked Massachusetts Institute of Technology and winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics, has […]
Why bad things can’t happen to good people! Because apples can’t grow on mango trees; Atman in Ravi; Air Institute of Realization; Rs.122; Pages 175
It is the human condition for every person to want happiness and conversely, to avoid pain. Yet, why is happiness so elusive and pain so ubiquitous? Why is there so much […]
We are displaced: My journey & stories from refugee girls around the world – Malala Yousafzai (with Liz Welch); Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Rs.399 Pages 212+xi
Displacement — within and across countries — of large numbers of people, owing to political instability or civil strife, is a fact of contemporary life. UN statistics indicate that nearly […]
Universities at the Crossroads; Andre Beteille Oxford University Press; Rs.423; Pages 216
Currently chancellor of North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, and formerly professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, Belgium-born, naturalised Indian Dr. Andre Beteille is a prolific writer who has addressed questions of inequality, power, social class, family, the disciplines […]
Talking to Strangers – Malcolm Gladwell Allen Lane; Rs.799; Pages 386
How are the world’s greatest liars, frauds and megalomaniacs able to inflict lasting damage upon their societies and the world without highly trained and intelligent experts and watchdogs being able to see through them and stop them in time? That’s the subject of the latest investigation […]
Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India; K.S. Komireddi; HURST; Rs.314; Pages 224
In 1964, Rajni Kothari wrote about the unique nature of the Indian party system describing it as a “one-party dominance” characterised by the existence of a multiparty system dominated by one party, the Indian national congress. It was an umbrella organisation […]
India, Empire & First World War Culture: Writings, Images & Songs Santanu Das; Cambridge University Press Rs.1,774; Pages 466
Winner of The Hindu literary prize (2019) in the non-fiction category, this history of the first World War and India is a deeply researched, well-structured retrieval of unconventional archival material that revolutionises ways of understanding transnational human […]
Single by choice: Happily unmarried women – Kalpana Sharma Women Limited; Rs.275; Pages 145
To be single by choice is not seen as choice. A few women I knew were kept single by their fathers so that the salary they brought home could provide for the son’s education. Others were promoted to the status of sons providing […]
The Anarchy: The relentless rise of the East India Company – William Dalrymple Bloomsbury; Rs.511; Pages 397
If there is a deep antagonism to capitalism within the collective psyche of Indians, it can be traced back to the corporate excess, exploitation and pillage of this landmass by the London-based East India Company (EIC) — undoubtedly the most […]
How to win an Indian election: What political parties don’t want you to know – Shivam Shankar Singh Penguin/Ebury press Rs.240, Pages 201
Shivam Shankar Singh’s How to Win an Indian Election is an insider’s candid account of how political parties leverage voters’ data and digital technologies for political campaigning. Singh headed data analytics and campaigns for […]
Gun Island – Amitav Ghosh; Penguin Random House, Rs.699, Pages 287
Amitav Ghosh is back with a fictional work after he declared in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016) that “the age of global warming defies both literary fiction and contemporary common sense” and therefore, such improbabilities are rarely “accommodated […]
Rooh-e-Rumi: Seeking god is seeking love; Mamta Sehgal, Notion press; Rs.240, Pages 173
Much has been written about the famed 13th century Sufi and Persian poet Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi, underlining the continuing relevance of his message centuries after he left the world for a better place. In this absorbing book, Mamta Sehgal highlights key […]
A gallery of rascals: My favourite tales of Rogues, Rapscallions & N’er do-wells, Ruskin Bond Aleph Book Company, Rs.385; Pages 208
To read Ruskin Bond’s fiction is to feel the transformation of Indian society after independence, combined with the inimitable knack of storytelling with which Bond characterises daily life in small town India.
No matter how old you are, if you are Indian, you can probably recall the first time you heard the story of Rama. The memory could be your grandmother’s voice in a room lit only by an oil lamp, or a book such as Rajagopalachari’s rendition, or pictures in the Amar Chitra Katha or the […]
Professor of world history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Dr. Yuval Noah Harari, the globally acclaimed author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2104), an international phenomenon which was on the Sunday Times (UK) bestseller list for over 25 weeks and has been translated into 40 languages worldwide, is one of the foremost […]
Tales from the history of mathematics – Archana Sarat
Readomania publishing, Rs.225, Pages 192
If there is one subject that evokes strong feelings in most students, it is mathematics. Simply uttering the word ‘maths’ is enough for someone to claim that they love the subject or more often, how much they hated it in school. But irrespective of […]
Nine Luminaries of Science – Joseph Mani Notion Press, Rs.200, Pages 188
There’s fascinating history in all men’s lives. One can draw valuable lessons even from histories of unremarkable and ordinary people. But it has to be accepted that reading about the lives and accomplishments of people who have made outstanding contributions in the cause of bettering […]
Gandhi: The years that changed the world – Ramachandra Guha, Penguin random house, Rs.980, Pages 1109
Surprisingly, this monumental 1,109-page biography of Mahatma Gandhi covering the years 1914 — when after having tried and tested the principles of ahimsa and satyagraha to attain political ends in South Africa, he returned to India — and 1948, the year of […]
Battling for India: A citizen’s reader – Edited by Githa Hariharan & Salim Yusufji Speaking Tiger, Rs.399, Pages 338
This book is a necessary compilation that comes from an embattled republic of letters in a nation slowly being desiccated by the philistinism of its politics.
The great merit of the book is its comprehensive nature as it focuses […]
There are histories of India, and then occasionally we have histories of south India.
K.A. Nilakanta Sastri’s pioneering A History of South India (1955), which soon established itself as a classic, demonstrated the possibility of studying south India as a distinct historical unit encompassing the Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam linguistic regions. Even though his narrative […]
Food 4 Thought Foundation collaborated with Cyient Foundation, the CSR arm of Cyient Ltd. (a global Intelligent Engineering services company), Monocept Consulting and Emesco Books .....Read More
In a significant move aimed at improving the educational system, the Odisha government has announced that the minimum age for enrolling in Class-1 will be .....Read More
