Encouraging turnout for the festival with average age being 21 years

Jaipur Day One: Naipaul's tears, cellphones and Charlie Hebdo

Business Standard

I found myself thinking No Hero could be a far more useful if unconventional addition to management literature than the reams of books with their tiresomely cliched solutions

A SEAL's rehab

Readers plunging into Stephen Kotkin's Stalin: Paradoxes of Power expecting a detailed dissection of the cobbler's son and seminarian from Georgia who evolved into the monster called Stalin may be disconcerted to find that, as a boy called Iosif Dzhugashvili (Jughashvili in this book), he plays a relatively minor role in early chapters.The narrative focuses largely on the disintegration of czarist Russia. What we do learn about the life of Soso, as Stalin's family referred to him, is served up as a relatively acceptable childhood given the time and place, denouncing the popular Freudian analyses that spot early evidence of a psychopath stemming from his absentee father, physical defects, beatings, religious education or doting mother.But Stalin is far more than the story of the man. Paradoxes of Power, even at almost 1,000 pages, is only the first of three volumes that, in Mr Kotkin's somewhat understated explanation, tell "the story of Russia's power in the world and Stalin's power in

Russian autocrat from the czarist rubble

Atul Gawande

Over biryani, Atul Gawande, the surgeon and writer, talks to Rahul Jacob about the need for honest conversations about end-of-life options

Lunch with BS: Atul Gawande, Surgeon and Writer

K Anji Reddy

The memoir of K Anji Reddy, founder of Dr Reddy's Laboratories, published nearly two years after his death, chronicles the battle over Grastim, its first domestically manufactured recombinant therapeutic drug, with Nicholas Piramal

Strong medicine

Sir Brian Barder portrays the working life of British diplomats through the experiences of a fictitious Adam, from the selection process at entry into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to his retirement. This is divided into chapters matching Adam's jobs. The narrative of Eve, his life partner, is interwoven into it. What might have been a work of realist fiction is leavened with doses of real life; the author's personal experiences presented as examples in each chapter. The style is chatty and personal, with wry humour and an absence of posturing. We obtain intimate insight into the functioning of the British diplomatic service in its professional, societal and human dimensions. This novel approach produces both an engaging narrative for the general reader, and a textbook.Let me highlight the book's striking elements from an Indian perspective, juxtaposing the United Kingdom's methods with our own. The selection process in the United Kingdom (and in other major countries) is handled

An anatomy of diplomacy

Russia is at the forefront of geostrategic power shifts again. After witnessing impressive economic growth over the past 15 years, the Russian rouble has seen a dramatic fall, fuelling fears of a deep recession. This decline can be attributed to falling global oil prices and the European Union/United States sanctions in the wake of Russian aggression in Ukraine. The falling oil price has hit oil and gas export economies, like Russia, Iran and Venezuela, far worse than it has affected the nascent shale gas economy in the United States. On another front, Russia has also adopted a revised military doctrine that labels the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) build-up in East Europe as a "violation of international law".At such a precarious juncture, The New Cold War gives an insight about the ideology, domestic political situation and foreign policy of Vladimir Putin's Russia. The author, Edward Lucas, is a senior editor at The Economist who has covered Central and Eastern Europe for

Geopolitics of the New Tsarism

Richard Bernstein's China 1945 is an excellent history of United States policy toward China at the end of World War II

America's 'bad' choice in pre-Mao China

A new book by Yasser Usman traces the spectacular rise and dramatic fall of Rajesh Khanna, along with his insecurities and other angularities. An extract

Rajesh Khanna: The lonely superstar

There are many pleasures - and some pain - to reading The Song of the Magpie

Conservation's gentle warrior

The volatility of capital flows has increased significantly in recent years, particularly since the global financial crisis of 2008, making their management one of the biggest challenges facing emerging market economies (EMEs).  The two broad strands of analysis in the book try to answer the following questions: (i) how successful were countries in managing their capital account in the face of volatile global capital flows during 2003-12? (ii) how effective were policymakers in stemming the fallout on the economies of these countries? The essays collected in the volume compare and contrast the theoretical paradigm and empirical evidence on the merits of capital account liberalisation and the role of capital account management, the latter with a focus on ways to attract larger capital flows to finance investment while safeguarding macro-management and averting sudden stops, flight to quality and the resultant destabilising forces to the economy.The publication brings together the perspe

The art of managing capital flow volatility

One had read about benign kings in mythological stories as a child. As one grew up, one realised that such people existed only in story books. In reality, they were cruel and unscrupulous, rich beyond imagination while their subjects lived in grinding poverty. There are many who bristle every time an ex-royal uses honorifics of the past: Maharaja, Rajkumari, Nawab. After reading Prince of Gujarat, we know there was one exception to the stereotype: social reformer and freedom fighter Gopaldas Desai. The book, sometimes languid and meandering, manages to tell an extraordinary story.Desai became the prince of Rai-Sankli and Dhasa, both in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, in 1912. One of his first acts was to set up councils of villagers at both the places, which had the authority to overrule his decisions. The villagers didn't hesitate to exercise this power - it wasn't reform just on paper. Once, Desai had wanted a bidi seller imprisoned and swiftly deported after he was caught selling

A prince among men

Halfway into Citizen Coke, Bartow J Elmore describes taking a treacherous journey through an Indian jungle in 2010

Coke, like greed, is good

Memories of Belonging opens up a dimension that has not been examined much by academic historians

The colony in retrospect

As it came after The Accidental Prime Minister, Sanjaya Baru's potboiler,  Strictly Personal: Manmohan & Gursharan, written by the former prime minister's second daughter, Daman Singh, was dismissed as a sedate affair, a protective daughter's feeble attempt to control the damage. Truth be told, Strictly Personal is as racy and packed with information as Baru's book. Of course, Manmohan Singh chooses his words carefully and gives little away, but the book captures very well his remarkable journey from an obscure village in pre-Partition Punjab to the highest echelons of power. And Daman Singh doesn't hesitate to reveal dark family stories and explore topics that households normally avoid at the dining table.Strictly Personal explains in simple terms the direction economic policy took after Independence. For me, another piece of a jigsaw fell in place after reading it: the Swraj Paul affair.  In 1983, London-based Paul had tried to wrest control of two Indian blue-chip companies, Esc

That storm in a tea cup

John Owen has set himself a daunting task: how the West is to confront the ubiquitous challenge of political Islam, or Islamism

Understanding Islamism through history

Exploding Aspirations is a collection of author Rajiv Kumar's columns in various newspapers over a period of time

The future out of context

A beaver hat is set at a rakish angle on the head of a laughing military officer, a bowl of fruit spills out of a delicate bowl made of Delft pottery, a young woman weighs gold and silver in a tiny jeweller's balance, a young black serving boy occupies centre stage in a painting of Dutch bourgeois domesticity. At one level, these are examples the famous Dutch interiors paintings of the 17th century universally admired for their careful lines, use of colour and, above all, the treatment of light. Subject to the curious scrutiny of an imaginative historian like Timothy Brook, however, they become windows to a fascinating world history at the dawn of globalisation.The art of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), a moderately successful painter, may be an unusual starting point for a history of early globalisation. But in five paintings by him Mr Brook spots clues to the surging expansion of global commerce following the European voyages of discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries. Mr Brook relies

History out of a hat

Forty places to see before you die. Ten best beaches in the world. Fifty most powerful women …If you visit the internet often enough, or even not that often, you can't miss these headlines that pop up whatever site you land on. Lists grab readers if search engine optimisation (SEO) experts (yes, in case you have been hiding behind a rock in a remote island somewhere, this is an important function in the digital economy and an area where many young engineers are cracking their IIT-sharpened brains) are to be believed. In the spirit of the times, therefore, 7 Secrets of the Goddess is no doubt a great title for a series (7 Secrets of Hindu Calendar Art, 7 Secrets of Shiva) of books. It will definitely draw in many more readers for a topic that is already widely read and may even make for a catchy television series title someday.But surely, this could not have been the only reason for naming the books thus. Given that there are way more than seven goddesses in the pantheon and even more

Mother, goddess, devi, woman

Gerard Russell in his new book chronicles emergence religious minorities that have been overshadowed by Judaism, Christianity and Islam

West Asia's lost minorities

The author compiles a list of the most eagerly awaited books next year

What to read in 2015

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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