The book, is based on extensive travels across Africa, blending detailed narratives of hardy Chinese adventurers, with analysis of the larger picture

China's empire state-building

Business Standard

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate is a book of such ambition and consequence that it is almost unreviewable

A Marshall Plan for Earth

Born over a century ago, Waugh wrote books that are remarkably contemporary. In Scoop, he poked fun at the newspaper business and (sometimes) shallow proprietors

Evelyn Waugh's sacred and profane prose

What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? How many Lego bricks are required to build a bridge between New York and London? What If offers insights leavened with humour into the way science deals with the falsifiable and the measureable

PopSci that makes you laugh, then think

Spectrum, the airwaves that enable wireless communication, has been the source of fierce controversy in India ever since India's comptroller and auditor general revealed a scandal in the allocation and pricing of this scarce resource. As the debate develops ahead of the latest auctions of spectrum, this book comes as a handy guide to the theoretical framework governing the technology and economics of spectrum.It is a comprehensive study that offers examples derived from practices around the world to illustrate the underlying principles of spectrum management. As importantly, it also offers a forward spin, with a section documenting future technologies that enable the use of spectrum spaces along with the accompanying economic rationale and policy prescriptions.This book starts with an introduction of the technology of wireless communications, proceeds to outline the economic principles that form spectrum management regimes and then presents the dynamics of the transition paths from leg

Spectrum and the policy continuum

Muslim history is diverse and complex, and so are the attempts of modern-day Muslims to cope with contemporary challenges. Mecca's history, though interesting and even important, is not the key that Muslims are seekingZiauddin Sardar begins his narrative with reflections on the character of the city of Mecca as a metaphysical entity and as the centre of the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages. Though sensitive to the spiritual allure of the city, he pays greater attention to the terrestrial Mecca where, in his words, "lives were lived, where heroes (and villains) thrived, atrocities were committed, and greed and intolerance were the norm".In the early years of Islam itself certain historical patterns were established that would resonate through Muslim history: remarkable military and political successes alongside fierce internecine conflicts for power, first within the family, clan and tribe of the prophet himself, and later between rival claimants representing different ethnic origins who had

Mecca: spiritual sanctum and terrestrial realities

Most readers will think they know Leon Panetta's memoir, Worthy Fights, through his recent slash-and-burn interviews, damning United States President Barack Obama for his lack of toughness in Iraq and Syria, and for doing little to check the rise of Islamic terrorism there. But those who actually read his inside account of almost half a century in Washington politics will get a shock: he devotes a mere dozen or so of his nearly 500 pages to criticism of these West Asia catastrophes.The scorching interviews are out of character for Mr Panetta. He has been a careful, loyal colleague who gets things done, and his book reveals the very able and honest man who seemingly would never turn on his own.So why did Mr Panetta give those interviews? It's not like him to purposefully cripple a president of his own party whom he basically likes. Nor has he criticised the White House in order to get it to alter its West Asia policies. Indeed he says Mr Obama is currently improving those policies. His

Leon Panetta's 'Worthy Fights'

The prose is flat and caricaturist in nature. While one understands why Bhagat couldn't have used Hindi for the narrative, he makes his characters sound like men and women from American films about Indians

Book Review: Half Girlfriend is half inane, half caricature

Iqbal's contradictions and complications make him very human and interesting. Still, few in India have bothered to explore his life, work and philosophy, perhaps because he believed in the "two-nation theory"

The contradictory Hindustani

Remember Google Books, the grand project to digitise all the books on earth? It began in 2002 when Co-Founder Larry Page was wondering if it was possible to make every book ever published searchable online.Do you know how Mr Page initiated the project? Well, here is what he did not do. He did not call a meeting of senior management. He did not organise an offsite or create a dedicated project team with its own mission statement. And he did not hire a management consultant who could write a report on the way forward.What he did do was to get hold of a digital camera, rig it to a tripod, point the camera down at the table, turn on a metronome (to pace his movements) and start snapping pictures. Someone had to turn the 300 pages of course. That someone was Marissa Mayer, then a Google product manager and now chief executive officer (CEO) of Yahoo. It took 40 minutes to complete. And over 30 million books are believed to have been scanned now (according to Wikipedia).Heard of Google Street

Google's smart creatives

In Nehru and Bose, Rudrangshu Mukherjee points out that both were manipulated by Gandhiji who preferred Nehru. The difference, he says, is that while Nehru (always) gave in, Bose did not

Two puppets and a marionette

Ebola has come to be described in horror-movie terms as an affliction, in the words of the journalist David Quammen, that "seems to kill like the 10th plague of Egypt in Exodus - the one inflicted by an angel of death". With a mortality rate as high as 90 per cent, it kills painfully and swiftly, with a seemingly remorseless calculus. There is even an article on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that compares Ebola to the ghastly scourge in "The Masque of the Red Death", the Edgar Allan Poe story that begins: "The 'Red Death' had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous."In Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus, Mr Quammen puts the frightening reality of Ebola - and the heightened language and hyperbole surrounding it - into perspective. This slender book is an expanded extract from his 2012 book Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, and it does a nimble job of situating this year's

Ebola facts are scary enough

Like his breathtaking performances, Naseeruddin Shah's entertaining memoir leaves a lasting impression on the reader

Naseeruddin Shah: the actor in my head

Think of what it took to be Michael Jackson, pop star chameleon forever mutating in the spotlight: the outrageous level of talent, the unbearable amount of scrutiny, to say nothing of the constant revising around race and gender."This prosthetic idea of the human," is how Susan Fast describes it in Michael Jackson's Dangerous, her new book about the 1991 album that announced Jackson's break from his pop mega-idol past into a more polyvalent present.Dangerous is, for many, the beginning of the end for Jackson, even though it sold many millions of copies and generated several hits. It followed Thriller and Bad, two of the most important and widely loved albums in pop history.But Fast, a professor in the English and cultural studies department at McMaster University in Ontario, thinks Dangerous is important, too, and sets out to rehabilitate it both as an album and as a site of Jackson's engagement with cultural politics.That task can't be done without touching on his body, which Fast cal

Moonwalk a mile in his shoes

In Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, James Risen, sets out to portray many seamy sides of the war on terror during past 13 years

Shameful side of the War on Terror

India's Afghan Muddle is set against the backdrop of the imminent withdrawal of United States forces in Afghanistan and attempts to highlight India's options in the emergent geopolitical scenarios in the region. The author, a professor of international relations at King's College London, has been a long-time observer of South Asian politics and security issues. In this work, Mr Pant has relied on news reports and independent analyses, from India and elsewhere, to construct an Indian narrative on the Afghanistan imbroglio.The objective of this work is threefold. First, the author draws attention to the urgency of the situation. He makes a case for India playing a proactive role in Afghanistan considering that a power vacuum will embolden forces that will inflict great damage to the Indian national interest. The second objective is to review the trajectory of India's Afghanistan policy to demonstrate how "India has largely been reactive in a strategic environment shaped by other actors".

India's Afghanistan predicament

What God's Own Office advocates - work from home - is already the emerging reality around us, as technology enables a new economy to take shape

Utopia, out of office

On June 27, 1971, Gitta Sereny conducted her final interview with Franz Stangl, who had been the commandant of Treblinka and Sobibor. She had already accumulated 70 hours of interviews with this man, responsible for the deaths of so many, in what would be a lifelong mission to understand evil.In this last interview, her questions were pressing, and she withdrew her sympathy: she did not accuse Stangl, but she placed a fence of silence between her and him."My conscience is clear about what I did, myself," he said as he had said many times before. Sereny said nothing."I have never intentionally hurt anyone, myself," he said. Sereny remained silent."But I was there," he finally said.Those few sentences, Sereny wrote, had taken almost half an hour to pronounce. Stangl, 63, went on to speak of his guilt. Sereny left; and a few hours after her departure, the former camp commandant died, of natural causes.That story makes a powerful impact because it is true. Perhaps we need it to be true, to

The slaughterhouses of the world

Dilip D'Souza's book on Sachin Tendulkar's final Test match is an erudite writer's assessment of a mad moment in Indian cricket's history

Book Review: Final Test-Exit Sachin Tendulkar

Kanu Sanyal never publicly spoke out against Charu Mazumdar while the latter was still alive - an omission, The First Naxal points< out, that Sanyal regretted

Red son rising

Can books change lives? As someone who reviews them for a living, I am primed to say they can. But doesn't life teach one to man up, be robust, do things that are right and practical? The world of literature, then, can seem prissy and out of touch with reality.Milan Kundera perhaps meant this when he wrote an entire book about the unbearable lightness of being. How do we reconcile the breathtaking promise of art with our trite realities? There is something precious given to us - an innocence, a lack of world-weariness - that we seem to lose along the way. How do our early selves morph into artless personas that we cling to for fear - fear, no less - that we might fall off the radar of worldly derring-do and its (hush!) attendant compromises? How tragic to look back on our past and find those spaces to be more ablaze, more lifelike!Growing up in a small city in Madhya Pradesh, my contact with world literature was muted. I was a child marked by whimsy; unable to figure out the world, I w

A novel ready reckoner

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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