Page 112 - Book Reviews

Michelle Obama opts for empowerment over politics

Michelle Obama puts to rest any speculation about her political ambitions

A question of autonomy: How independent can independent agencies really be?

The central banker functions in all the slots and parallelly with the state, and it is but natural that there are issues of turf and tensions

A national security primer

The emphasis is on the descriptive aspects of India's national security system

From love to liberation: 'Written in History' combines solitude and company

It is true that letters sound like an anachronism in today's world; short text messages and tweets have taken away from us the ability to write a letter in the old-fashioned way.

The Shanghai connection

The book is the result of painstaking research, including poring over archival material and interviewing descendants of the prominent merchant families

Taking stock of Sebi

A regulator's job entails standing up to a variety of pulls and pressures exerted by vested interests

When home is 'always another country'

For children for whom "home" means the family unit rather than a particular location, leaving is not necessarily marked by physical movement

'The English Maharani': Queen Victoria's soft corner for India's royalty

Miles Taylor offers a meticulously researched account of a queen-empress who tried to compensate in India for the political role she was denied at home

Weighing up rationalism

Dabholkar's death vitiates the movement against superstition, and took away the chance for greater nuance in a debate that is too often hijacked by extreme voices

Book review: The rise of passive resistance

The author observes that Gandhi "learnt the important lesson that Indian crowds could be very violent" and that non-violence was not intrinsic to the culture of the sub-continent

Lost city

Readers will have enough opportunities to laugh and cry at the delectable recollections in the four short prose narratives included in this book

Paradoxes galore

The book begins with a penetrating profile of the prime minister, drawn from existing books and secondary writing on Mr Modi, as well as from personal insights, interactions and exchanges

Alan Greenspan's ode to creative destruction

The book barely mentions Mr Trump beyond condemning his "dangerous" trade policies

'No Spin' review: The fascinatingly candid autobiography of Shane Warne

Shane Warne's tell-all autobiography is every bit as controversial and engrossing as his cricketing career

Two-century-old journey of the Quantum riddle

Newton believed light was a particle, and Huygens believed light was a wave. Both were correct but this was not acceptable to the 17th-century scientists

More on winning friends and influencing people

Even if the central thought is nothing new, the good thing is The Challenge Culture has a storytelling tone and is an easy read

We need to talk

Most people in Delhi would remember where they were when they heard the news of the 2012 gang-rape case

For whom the bell tweets

So fundamental, in fact, that technological innovation - another universal human experience - is often prompted by war

What our extremist politics owes to Batman and Captain America

For those who agree to take it, the journey in The Sky Is Falling isn't as propulsive or as fun as in Biskind's other books

A young-at-heart nonagenarian celebrates life in a new diary

Jan Morris' first diary showcases the great non-fiction writer's ability in her 90s to look at the past with near total recall and yet analyse our muddled present with wit