Before Robert Ludlum, three writers in the seventies defined the popular thriller for me: Alistair Maclean, Desmond Bagley and Frederick Forsyth. By then Fleming's novels had morphed into the flourishing movie property and John Le Carre was, well, in a class by himself.Bagley rarely touched great heights but Maclean (Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare and Fear is the Key) and Mr Forsyth (The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File and The Dogs of War) saw their best-sellers turned into memorable movies. Bagley and Maclean died young - at ages 59 and 65 respectively - and their books went out of vogue, overtaken by writers attuned to the shifting dynamics of global politics and the digital age.At 77, Mr Forsyth has had the good fortune to live long enough to write more contemporary books (though to diminishing acclaim) and now this autobiography. It is certainly a story worth telling. The Outsider reveals a life as fast-paced and stylishly versatile as his novels. Mr Fors

Forsyth's saga

Business Standard

Strategy has got to be the most abused word in business. People toss it around all the time - CEOs talk of strategies for growth, marketing heads likewise for increasing sales. These are actually goals tom-tommed as strategies, and that is the fundamental problem with strategy. Not that business authors haven't pointed this out earlier, but what is interesting about this book is that it actually lays down a framework to identify one from the other and also a formula - which the authors call a palette - to determine and deploy the best strategy for a business.Don't go by the title of the book - I would rather read spam mails for a week than open a book with that name. But once you get down to it, you will see the book breaks rank with typical offerings on the subject and shifts attention from what is being done to why it is being done, from the directions chosen to the problems that these choices address.The best part of the book is the way it breaks down situations corporations face to

Making 'strategy' work

Never Enough is an admirably straight­forward, even-handed but nonetheless damning account of Mr Trump's life

Trump & the art of narcissism

Book Review: Where stones give history a voice

Mehrauli

Mehrauli 2

Where Stones Speak

Rana Safvi's informative account of the monuments of Delhi's oldest surviving cities encourages readers to love and understand history

YES, MY ACCENT IS REAL

Kunal Nayyar, the London-born, New Delhi-raised, Los Angeles-based star of American sitcom The Big Bang Theory, in which he plays astrophysicist Rajesh Koothrapali, is out with a memoir. After Tina Fey's Bossypants and Amy Poehler's Yes, Please, comes Nayyar's Yes, My Accent is Real. Nayyar is no match for these seasoned comedians, whose memoirs are hilarious, reflective, super quote-worthy and lessons in the art of life itself. But you can't fault the man for trying.The book starts with school misadventures such as a nosebleed from a Coca-Cola and "holding hands in the popcorn" (the latter from a chapter titled "My A-Z Guide to getting nookie in New Delhi"). Apparently, before moving to US to study in 1999, Nayyar didn't know how to cook ramen and was unaware that invisible house elves don't come to clean and change your bed sheets while you are away from your room. He went 11 months without changing his sheets and peed on the Delhi roads right before his wedding, proving once again t

From Kunal to Koothrapali

The author has recreated a political history of Bihar of the last three decades through the stories of key political figures

Dateline Bihar

For Indian readers the book Poison Spring is both a myth-buster and an early warning signal

Inconvenient truths about EPA

This book will probably find a place on military history library shelves as the definitive work on the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war

1965, blow by blow

Vivian Richards

One of the finest analysts in cricket provides an entertainingly informative book about what makes leading batsmen tick

Crease control

The book Once in a Great City would have benefited from a little more context, like the causes and consequences of the 1967 riot

The glory days of Detroit

Book Review: The girl in a complicated plot

The Girl In Spider's Web

David Lagercrantz's continuation of Steig Larsson's trilogy fails to match the original

The former Planning Commission office in Sansad Marg

Former Planning Commission Member Arun Maira recalls his efforts to work around the maze of bureaucratic procedures to bring outsiders to work in Yojana Bhavan in this excerpt from An Upstart in Government

Tripping through red tape

Dianne Hales's book is a master class for journalists, instructing them on the nature and extent of research necessary to write a book of such ambition

Mona Lisa behind the portrait

Rachna Bisht Rawat's book 1965: Stories from the Second Indo-Pak War is an account of the five battles that define the war

Five battles in 1965

The book gives a highly enjoyable insight into the process of change in India

Three months in 1991

Jairam Ramesh

Jairam Ramesh's entertaining and educative account of the crucial months that ushered in economic reforms whets the appetite for more

Book Review: Three months in 1991

Former presidents may keep quiet about those who occupy the White House once they leave, but the code clearly does not extend to vice-presidents. Nearly seven years after leaving office, Dick Cheney has produced a book that amounts to a stinging indictment of President Obama as an ineffectual, America-hating, military-destroying, soft-on-terrorism appeaser whose tenure has damaged the country.It is a case he prosecutes relentlessly. To the witness stand, Mr Cheney and his daughter and co-author, Liz Cheney, summon the ghosts of presidents past, including Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan, to testify to the greatness of America and what they call the bipartisan postwar tradition of muscular leadership on the world stage.This is a tradition Mr Obama has shirked, the writers argue, making him a modern-day Neville Chamberlain. "The damage that Barack Obama has done to our ability to defend ourselves is appalling," they write in Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful Am

Mr Cheney makes Mr Obama the villain

The imprint of hindutva

The popular publishing house Gita Press was also a powerful voice for the Hindu right. A well-researched history chronicles its little-known role in the revivalist movement

Gita Press and the imprint of Hindutva

The book is fast-paced and readable, especially when you consider the large font

Mrs Not-so-funnybones

Inequality is back in fashion, thanks to Thomas Piketty. Yet, before Mr Piketty, there was Tony Atkinson, his teacher, who has been at the forefront of research on the topic since the 1960s. Over the last few years, inequality has become a central concern of public debate in much of the developed world. The Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project asked respondents in 2014 about the "greatest danger to the world" and found that in the United States and Europe "concerns about inequality trump all other dangers." In India, inequality is a major concern only after "religious and ethnic hatred". So the comprehensive set of policies based on theoretical and practical experience that Atkinson recommends bears significance for much of developed and developing world today.To start with, it is important to clarify the basic difference between the two recent books on inequality. While both are written by academic economists, Mr Atkinson's Inequality: What Can Be Done? is unlikely to match

Why inequality needs a radical agenda

For the better part of the year, the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and opposition parties have been locked in a bitter battle over the contentious land acquisition Bill. In the midst of this intense political bickering, a senior politician casually remarked over a cup of coffee that if the government really thought land availability were an issue, it should simply hand over all its land holdings to the corporate sector.It was an offhand comment that reflected exasperation at the impasse. Inadvertently, however, it raised the larger issue of the management or rather mismanagement of government assets. It is an issue that requires serious interrogation.This situation is not unique to India.Problems with government ownership and management are well known. Government control of assets often leads to political meddling, clientism and corruption. The lack of transparency allows governments to distribute favours and create a patronage system. These assets are used to bu

Minimum government, maximum wealth

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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