Page 109 - Book Reviews

Imperial frontiers and conquests

The author's description of the Portuguese challenge to Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan in Bengal is particularly informative

India's Beat Generation

While interest in the poets has certainly piqued in recent years readers will be left with more questions than answers after reading the book.

The spectre of BJP

Though Ghose pegs the book to the present government, blamed for an increase in illiberalism, let's focus on that core liberal agenda

Creating the calm corporation

By making the right choices, it is possible to build a company that is perhaps less ambitious, but is profitable, gentler on its employees, and true to its customers

The art of tech poaching

Ms Zuboff can get overheated with her metaphors; an extended passage with tech executives as Spanish conquistadors and the rest of us as indigenous peoples is frankly ridiculous

The British in India: Gilmour's book typifies revisionist history writing

Gilmour reconstructs the lives of the Britons in India with loving detail but one misses the distance that separated the rulers from the ruled

How paradise was lost

Radha Kumar's accounts convey the deep sense of loss of dignity and respect among a people subjected daily to demeaning encounters with security forces. This has to change for any progress to be made

AIDS memoir

Avahan, the focused AIDS prevention initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was at the forefront of this mammoth public health battle

Travels and travails on the LoC

This book is, ultimately, a useful and interesting read for students of India-Pakistan relations

The truths out there

The one thing you begin to notice in this book is that propagating a reflexive scepticism and sowing discord aren't terribly difficult, especially when there's a vested interest willing to pay for it

This tiny shop in Delhi stocks donated books to spread the joy of reading

Established in 2002, a quaint little bookshop in Delhi stocks some of the finest donated books, and helps slum children read and write by raising funds from the sales, writes Sneha Bhattacharjee

A new book challenges the link between ancient Indian society and the Vedas

Read it and follow up on the citations if you want to learn more about yourself and your ancestors

The realities of Lutyens' Delhi

Despite the wealth of details tracing the evolution of the city through the 20th and the first two decades of this century, the book does not really end

India's forgotten blueprint for growth

At the outset, Bombay Plan is undoubtedly a far more thorough, comprehensive and honest economic document than we see from the industry associations of today

The Civil War's fugitive origins

The War Before the War is mainly a straightforward account of events that, although familiar to professional historians, ought to be known by anyone who claims to know anything about American history

In Nagpur, a 'rescue centre' helps writers evolve into public speakers

Nikhil Chandwani, founder, Writers'Rescue Centre, identifies himself more as a political enthusiast now than a social entrepreneur and writer

Leonard Cohen's posthumous collection of poems, lyrics and sketches

The poems are monotonous scribbles of the moody-undergraduate school, what young Werther would have sung had he been Canadian

The innovative ancients

Plato's Alarm Clock, fascinating and easy to read, ends on a sobering note

Cheering madrasas

Madrasas, according to Ms Borker, changed the lives of Muslim girls. Otherwise, they may have been still stuck at home, changing nappies

Bhagat Singh's real legacy

The message of this edited volume is that an individual who is not in tune with the mainstream ideas of his own society is liable to be punished, and Bhagat Singh was no exception