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

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru with US President John F Kennedy at the White House in 1961

M K Rasgotra has created an enduring portrait of Indian diplomacy in the first 50 years of Independence

Aide-memoire

Business Standard

In 1909, William Butler Yeats posited a theory of romantic devotion. "True love is a discipline," he wrote in his journal. "Each divines the secret self of the other, and refusing to believe in the mere daily self, creates a mirror where the lover or the beloved sees an image to copy in daily life."The idea that love compels us to make aspirational selves is a romantic one, but the reciprocal artifice can be tyrannical too. It's an argument made by Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies, two of the most read and talked-about novels from the past few years. Both are about rage and deceit and marriage, and - most crucially - both are split in two, with the husband's recounting of the relationship paired with the wife's complicating narrative corrective. In a strange way, the novels contain within themselves their own sequels. The success these books enjoyed has revealed how eager American readers are not only for plot-thick page-turners written in decent prose but

Which books deserve a sequel?

On the evening of April 15, 2014, Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis, a book written by Paranjoy Guha-Thakurta, Subir Ghosh and Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri was officially released at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. The next day lawyers for Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries (RIL) sent the authors a legal notice alleging defamation, calling for a cease on the sale, publication and distribution of the book. The notice suggested that all copies be destroyed, publicity for the book be stopped and the authors tender an unconditional apology. The same notice was sent to the publisher, distributor, printer, internet retailers Amazon, Flipkart and Kobo and even to the lady who sent the invitations for the launch function.A week later, on April 22, came a second legal notice from ADAG, the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. On April 23, came a third notice to all the nine respondents. This one took umbrage at comments made at the launch function and asked for damages of Rs 100 crore within 10

SLAPPing the messenger

Rage of the river is a light and breezy read. Within the first few pages it feels like an immersive travelogue, except that there are no happy scenes in the Mandakini valley

Himalayan blunders in Kedarnath

A lot of effort goes into sustaining what Mervyn King calls the "alchemy" of modern monetary and banking systems in his latest book

Central banks as 'pawnbrokers'

"The very rich are different from you and me," Ernest Hemingway has F Scott Fitzgerald write in the original version of  The Snows of Kilimanjaro. "Yes," comes the response, "they have more money."This famous (and wholly fictional) exchange is memorable because it captures so succinctly one of the great fascinations of finance, how it is at the same time something so completely mysterious and so utterly banal. It also poses an important question: Does having more money than someone constitute a difference only in quantity, or in quality? Does the increase of financial wealth just make for more of the same - or does it change people in a more essential way?The goal of William N Goetzmann, professor of finance and management at Yale, in his book is to explore the consequences of the invention and growth of finance. As his title suggests, his conclusion is that they are firmly positive.The idea that dominates this book is that finance is a "technology of civilization" - a way of thinking

Finance, the master technology

Jaggi Vasudev

Mata

Chandraswam

Travelling across the 'guru' universe

Bhavdeep Kang has provided a useful anthology of India's leading spiritual gurus and their sprawling global empires

Navayana's latest anthology of B R Ambedkar's work, Riddles in Hinduism, is yet another reminder in these fraught times of the necessity to critically examine the basis of Hinduism

Riddled with contradictions

Jairam Ramesh's new book Old History New Geography is a fascinating chronicle of the why and the how of the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into two states

Insider's view of Telangana's creation

Rajiv Kumar is a familiar face as economist and columnist, with impressive academic credentials. He is currently with Centre for Policy Research. He is also a personal friend.In terms of the structure, Mr Kumar has produced a most unusual book. The table of contents mentions the chapters but does not number them. Spread over 317 pages, there are five chapters.  We can ignore the first chapter, because that is a brief introduction on the May 2014 electoral outcome. After Chapters 2, 3 and 4, we have an appendix, roughly in the middle of the book, that comprises a listing of what various ministries have done since May 2014.  I didn't quite understand why it is located there, perhaps to indicate a clean break between Chapters 2, 3 and 4 and what comes thereafter. You almost get the feel of reading two different books.The second half of the book has Chapter 5 and an epilogue, followed by another appendix. This second appendix is a compilation of Mr Kumar's newspaper articles on the 2016-17

Modinomics revisited

Last month, after reading some novels by a Reserve Bank of India economist, I had idly wondered in this column if any economist other than John K Galbraith had ever written a novel. Galbraith had written two satirical ones.There was a prompt answer from Niranjan Rajadhyaksha whose erudition in economics is matched only by his cheerful optimism about literature. He mailed me saying that someone called Marshall Jevons had indeed written a novel, that too a crime thriller.Thoroughly intrigued, I googled Marshall Jevons and found that there were four novels by this author with such an unlikely name. In the event, Marshall Jevons turned out to be the good professors William Briet and Kenneth Elzinga.The former, in fact, turned out to be the Briet of Breit and Hochman of Readings in Microeconomics fame. He passed away in 2011. Professor Elzinga has kept the flag flying and written a fourth novel called the Mystery of the Invisible Hand.I quickly turned to Amazon and was astonished to find th

T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: The economics of murder

Zubin Mehta the authorised score

A carefully researched biography makes a creditable attempt to portray the mercurial Indian conductor of western classical music

These new books will help younger readers understand just what a long strange trip Muhammad Ali's life has been

An endless round of books

For close to a decade, as chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi exhibited a persecution complex

Ayyub assumed identity of Maithili Tyagi for her investigations for Gujarat Files

Despite the lack of fresh information,  Gujarat Files underlines the sinister nature of Modi's regime in Gujarat even as it cocks a snook at the state's fabled intelligence network

Gujarat Files: Rana Ayyub and stinging truths

The book, an account of Clint Hill days as a Secret Service agent under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, is also free of self-congratulation or prurient gossip

Bodyguard who walked beside history

Thomas Piketty's critically acclaimed Capital in the Twenty First Century was majestic in its sweep

Mr Piketty's world views

There is no shortage of books on Indian advertising, but Nawabs, Nudes and Noodles stands out for offering a glimpse of the transformation of Indian society

'Nude models wanted...'

The book sounds refreshingly new. For Chris Lehmann has shown us why religious history is the mainstream of American history

The place of religion in a capitalist society

Soccermatics

Game theories

A math professor has written a fascinating book that will make both football fans and geeks happy

Shoe Dog is a brave attempt by Phil Knight at unveiling himself to the world

Nike's founder finally tells his story

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

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

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