An internationally famed cellist, also the best friend of a ruthless politician, serving as the clandestine owner of shady companies that help the elite in his country siphon away public funds; corrupt officials selling off broadcasting rights for major sporting events to a private media company for a pittance; a "banana republic" in Central America offering a tax haven; and at the centre of it, the mysterious son of a former Waffen-SS officer assisting drug lords, gun runners and autocrats conceal their ill-gotten wealth... Sounds like the plot of an Alistair McLean pot boiler?On the contrary: It's the true story of the greatest data leak ever. And, the international journalists who dug through the unimaginable mountains of data to focus the light of day on a shadow financial system that aids the rich and powerful conceal their wealth, and maintain the status quo of inequality. Now, the world knows of the leak as "Panama Papers" - the 1.5 million documents of the Panamanian law firm M

A Promethean project

Business Standard

As Henri De Wailly's book, rigged wars are by no means the prerogative of the 21st century powers

Syria's forgotten war

From Hobbes and Hegel to John Stuart Mill and John Rawls, the seminal figures of Western political theory are united in their almost complete neglect of immigration. No doubt they have their reasons. Who among them witnessed anything like the global refugee crisis of 2015? Or the anxieties about national identity that it inflamed? Be that as it may, with hostility toward immigrants and refugees fueling the "Brexit" movement and the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, we could use some deep thinking about the relationship between the state and its citizens.On the case is the political philosopher David Miller. His book Strangers in Our Midst: The Political Philosophy of Immigration aims to be the first to combine such an abstract approach to the topic with such a strong dose of realism. Make no mistake: Mr Miller is a humane, social democratic Oxford University professor. But comes down in favour of a state's right - except when human rights are threatened - to close its borders to o

Deep thinking about immigration

26/11 case: David Headley says ready to depose if he receives pardon

An account of David Headley's life, often in his own words, provides a useful study in how radicalised youth cross the boundaries into terrorism

A terrorist's mind map

Ashraf Marwan betrayed Egypt for close to three decades as an influential spy for Israel

The great betrayer

Being the Other: The Muslim in India explores the continuing marginalisation of Muslims in India in the post-partition years

India's unofficial apartheid

Few people know that Swami Vivekananda was fluent in Sanskrit. He had a disciple named Sharatchandra Chakravarty who kept a diary, written in Bengali but it has since been translated into English. This anecdote is from this diary. Shri Ramakrishna had a householder disciple named Nag Mahashaya. On one occasion in 1897, when Sharatchandra Chakravarty was present, another disciple, who frequently visited Nag Mahashaya, came to meet Swami Vivekananda and mentioned Nag Mahashaya. Swami Vivekananda addressed this disciple in Sanskrit with a reference to Nag Mahashaya's great spiritual success. Translated, the quote reads: "We have been destroyed in our pursuit of the truth. O bee! You are the one who has indeed been successful."What is remarkable is not that Swami Vivekananda spoke in Sanskrit, but that he used a quote from literature, Kalidasa's Abhijnanashakuntalam in this case. The Shakuntala story is about King Dushyanta and Shakuntala, and King Dushyanta said this when a bee was hoveri

Bibek Debroy: A recognition of Kalidasa

Defining and understanding these 12 technological forces and how they will shape our future in the next 30 years is the thrust of The Inevitable

Our digital lives tomorrow

The true history of the games is a far cry from the platitude-laden, sepia-toned nostalgia pumped out by the International Olympic Committee and sponsors

Dark history of the Olympics

The next booms, busts and protests

With a focus on change in five to ten years, Ruchir Sharma's new book, The Rise and Fall of Nations, manages to make a persuasive case for a general audience

A recent spate of bombings and attacks all over the world - Dhaka to Istanbul, Medina to Baghdad - has served as a reminder, an especially cruel one during Ramadan, of the continued threat of the Islamic State (IS). Though the terror outfit suffered major setbacks in Iraq, losing Fallujah at the end of June, it continues to attract disillusioned people from all over the globe, including about 20 from Kerala last month, with the promise of a utopia. Tabish Khair's new novel follows two English girls who undertake the treacherous journey through Turkey and war-torn Syria to join the jihadis. It is an essential tale for our times - and a terrifying one.The title of the novel is, quite obviously, inspired by Jihadi John, the British recruit who was purportedly seen beheading about 30 people in videos released by the Islamic State. Originally, Mohammed Emwazi, he was named "John" by a group of his hostages as he was part of a four-person terrorist cell called The Beatles because all its mem

A regular tale of terror

Authors Arun Gadre and Abhay Shukla have based this book on a set of 78 interviews with leading doctors across the country conducted at Support for Advocacy and Training to Health Initiatives

Doctors diagnose the decline of health care

Ms Anja Manuel has tackled political systems and dissent in both countries as interrelated themes

The new world troika

S Muthiah and Ranjitha Ashok's book collects plenty of such anecdotes from erstwhile employees of British firms in India, and presents them in an immensely readable format

My granduncle's hat & other tales

Antonio Garcia Martinez's Chaos Monkeys, a book whose bland all-purpose title belies the fact that this is a valley account like no other

In the engine room of the start-up economy

Duvvuri Subbarao with Pranab Mukherjee

Duvvuri Subbarao with P Chidambaram

'Who Moved My Interest Rate? Leading the Reserve Bank Through Five Turbulent Years' by Duvvuri Subbarao

Duvvuri Subbarao recounts how his tensions with P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee, then finance ministers, over monetary policy spilled over into other issues in the central bank. An exclusive excerpt from Who Moved My Interest Rate?, his memoir of his term as Reserve Bank of India governor

Subbarao vs UPA: The governor in his labyrinth

Between Mint Road and North Block

Duvvuri Subbarao has written an introspective and candid memoir of his testing tenure at the central bank

The book contains evocative details of Rao's failures in preventing two of the ugliest incidents of social disharmony in independent India - the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition and the 1984 Sikh riots

Narasimha Rao: one legacy, two verdicts

Amitav Ghosh creates a fabric out of threads drawn from all the themes that must be part of a complete conversation on climate change

Philosopher's guide to climate change

The transition from British rule to independence is conventionally described as peaceful. This is true only insofar as there was no armed conflict with the erstwhile imperial power, for multitudes died in the Partition bloodbath and there was open war within two months of the "Brexit".The subcontinent has never enjoyed an extended period of peace since. India has fought three-and-a-half wars with Pakistan, one war with China (plus a big artillery duel), indulged in an insane foray into Sri Lanka, carried out a more justifiable counter-coup in the Maldives and also been enmeshed in innumerable long-running internal conflicts with separatists, insurgents, Maoists, and what have you. The republic also undertook several "police actions" between 1948 and 1961, to integrate princely states like Hyderabad and Junagadh, and to force the Portuguese out of Goa, Daman and Diu.This book covers conventional conflicts and police actions during the first quarter-century of independent India's existen

How the battles were lost & won

For George W Bush, the summer already looks unbearable. The party he gave his life to will repudiate him by nominating a bombastic serial insulter, who makes the famously brash former president look like a museum docent by comparison. And a renowned presidential biographer is weighing in with a judgment that makes Mr Bush's gentleman's Cs at Yale look like the honour roll.If Mr Bush eventually gets a more sympathetic hearing by history, as he hopes, it will not start with Jean Edward Smith's Bush, a comprehensive and compelling narrative punctuated by searing verdicts of all the places where the author thinks the 43rd president went off track.Mr Smith, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, made a name for himself in part with masterly biographies of Dwight D Eisenhower and Ulysses S Grant, offering historical reassessments of underrated presidents who looked better with the passage of time. With Bush, he sticks to the original conventional assessment, presenting a shoot-from-the-hip Texan

Biography of Mr Bush as scathing indictment

Book News: Check out for latest book news, reviews, book launches and more on Business Standard. Explore now for new books reviews along with books writers and novel reviews and more.

Books News: Latest Book, Book Reviews, Book Features, Book Launches | Business Standard

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