"The genius of you Americans," the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser teasingly told a senior CIA official, Miles A Copeland Jr, in the late 1950s, "is that you never made clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves."By then, Nasser had good reason to gloat. For years, the State Department and the CIA had sought to marginalise - if not altogether eliminate - the upstart Egyptian leader. Instead, through a colossal series of missteps, the Eisenhower administration had helped catapult Nasser onto the global stage, where he became the undisputed spokesman for Pan-Arab nationalism and the United States' chief nemesis in the Middle East.If hard to imagine today, there were two distinct moments when the US was regarded as a beacon of hope to the peoples of the Middle East. The first opportunity was thrown away at the end of World War I when, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Arab leaders sued for either independence or American conservatorship, believing that the nation's

How the Middle East was lost

A faulty approach to money supply in the mid-eighties transformed the paradigm for monetary policy, says A Seshan in this review of the fourth volume of RBI's history series

The origin of runaway inflation

Business Standard

A biography of a sportsperson in mid-career? Well, if it's cricket, it works. If it's India, it works better. That is why Sunil Gavaskar wrote four books in his playing days, and none afterwards. Books on Sachin Tendulkar appeared at an age when most other lads his age would be thinking of what stream to consider for graduate studies. Now, here's a book on Mahendra Singh Dhoni. His career is far from over, but the book calls itself "The story of India's most successful captain", caring little for any negative possibilities in the future.But that is cricket in India. It allows you to deify men, create legends around their short sporting lives, make money out of their stories. Shantanu Guha Ray's Mahi is perhaps timely, for at this juncture in his tempestuous cricketing life, Dhoni has earned for himself the respect of peers as the best finisher in the game - and probably the best skipper in the business. His third virtue is his work behind the stumps, which, if not spectacular, is compe

Opus dei for M S Dhoni

Howard Graham Buffett, son of the legendary billionaire investor Warren Buffett, has poured his heart out in a lyrical expression of the spirit of American philanthropy. Forty Chances is a collection of 40 stories about hunger, poverty and violent civil wars in Africa, Asia and Latin America. These stories are meant to mentor and evangelise lessons in conservation agriculture for food security.In the Foreword, Warren Buffett recognises the arbitrariness of the "ovarian lottery" in creating haves and have-nots. But inspired by the "boundless energy" of his "farmer son", the Oracle of Omaha believes that lucky ones can share their good fortune through "intelligent philanthropy". So, in 2006, when he decided to donate a substantial part of his fortune to philanthropy, his son Howard took it upon himself to address the crisis in farming and global hunger.The leitmotif of the book revolves around age-old wisdom of "40 growing seasons" in farming. This nugget about farming life comes from a

Howard G Buffett's food security acts

There is one problem with journalist Mini Menon's book Riding the Wave: the choice of the seven entrepreneurs profiled here.They were chosen, she explains in the introduction, because they "have changed the rules of the game" of business. These entrepreneurs grew out of the ferment in India after 1991 and they succeeded against all odds to stay ahead of the game, she adds.Yet a cursory reading of Ms Menon's list makes you wonder why some of the names are there at all, or why others have been overlooked although they have done much better without publicity (Rahul Bhatia comes to mind offhand).Many of the industrialists profiled in the book are no longer riding the wave of success; either they are in serious financial trouble or they have been forced to sell their business or become mere investors because their companies are run by others. Ms Menon does provide an afterword to trace their fortunes since she started writing about them, but that is hardly a credible caveat.Take, for instan

Business in choppy waters

Frank Dikotter, who won plaudits for Mao's Great Famine, the breathtaking account of how a dictator's megalomania killed more than 30 million Chinese in a man-made famine in 1957-59, has now presented an equally disquieting prequel. The Tragedy of Liberation documents the years before the disastrous Great Leap Forward, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) killed millions of Chinese as it consolidated its hold after sweeping to power in 1949. Like in his earlier book on the later period, Mr Dikotter works from official documents of that period. In saying little while letting the documents speak, Mr Dikotter presents an authoritative account of how millions of Chinese were killed - or killed themselves in desperation - as the party's icy hands closed over the throats of an entire people.Mao Zedong is the psychopathic spider at the centre of this web of death, directing pogroms, and laying down shockingly high quotas for executions that his party workers enthusiastically implemented and

Mao's unveiling, Part II

Ramachandra Guha's latest book Gandhi Before India traces the evolution of a leader from a nearly-failed foppish barrister to the Mahatma in the four decades after he left South Africa

Mahatma in the time of antipathy

Mass Flourishing is a deceptive title for a remarkable book. It covers several centuries of thought; has a range that moves from economics into politics, literature and philosophy; places short-term events on a long timeline; helps understand the implications of patchwork policies over the fabric of economies.The book engages with the concept of a "modern economy". How do we achieve happiness and a just and equitable society? The process of unravelling modern economy leads to a discussion of multiple ideas: Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism, Corporatism are all discussed in the context of economic growth, common good and happiness. Prof Phelps uses data, but also draws on art and literature to assess how people were perceiving the changes.Prof Phelps connects several unrelated events to trace the evolution of modern economy. The real increase in wages; reduction in incidence of disease because of advancement of science; and reduction of poverty and pauperism. He then examines urbanisation

Economies beyond economics

Most successful entrepreneurs have managed not to stray from their primary vision. Jeff Bezos is no exception. From the time he founded Amazon in 1994 with $10,000 of his own cash, he stuck to a single belief. It was that the web had the power to fundamentally change the landscape for companies and customers.Like most entrepreneurs, he faced scepticism and disbelief. Like Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, another Seattle start-up, who had told Bezos in an early meeting, "You have no physical presence. That's going to hold you back." Bezos' response to Schultz: "We are going to take this thing to the moon". The two companies had explored a strategic alliance that fell through because Starbucks wanted a greater share in Amazon's stock than the latter was willing to part with.During a presentation to Harvard Business School students in 1997, a student told him: "You seem like a really nice guy...but you really need to sell to Barnes & Noble and get out now." Bezos' response: "I think

Conquering Earth to reach the moon

The Tudor dynasty, which ruled England from 1485 to 1603, has exercised endless fascination for anyone with a passing interest in world history. This was, after all, the dynasty that imposed seminal changes on European politics through the colourful lives of Henry VIII and his second-born daughter, Elizabeth I, and saw Britain's rise as a superpower.Predictably, the era has spawned a lively culture of literature, song, drama, TV series and cinema (including an Oscar-nominated one by Shekhar Kapur). For more entertainingly informed recent works, few can match Hilary Mantel's fictional series (Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, a third is in the works). I would add Thomas Penn's The Winter King (2011), a splendid biography of Henry VII, the less-remembered founder of the House of Tudor who created the enormous wealth from which his much-married son could build a solid power base.  Elizabeth's Bedfellows is a readable addition to this recent literature, though narrower in approach.It is a

The keepers of Regina Intacta

He was one of North Korea's deadliest secret agents.On October 9, 1983, Kang Min-chul and two other North Korean agents bombed the Martyrs' Museum in Rangoon, Burma, in a plot to kill the South Korean president, who was to have laid a wreath there. The bomb missed its mark - the president's car had been delayed - but 17 South Koreans, including four cabinet ministers, were killed.Kang was consigned to oblivion. North Korea denied any connection with the attack. In South Korea, where the bombing was declared a North Korean atrocity, few cared to remember that a North Korean was languishing in a Burmese prison for it. In 2008, Kang died at 53. During 25 years in prison, he received not a single visitor from his homeland.Today, 30 years after the bombing, his story has been resurrected in an unlikely quarter: Ra Jong-yil, a former deputy director of the South Korean National Intelligence Service, has written a book about Kang called Forgotten Terrorist.Though the author is quick to label

North Korea's 'erased' killer

A coffee-table book with a novel format unwittingly captures the contrast between Madras and Chennai

Tales of two cities

The Roman statesman Cicero, a contemporary of Julius Caesar, checked his mail (written on papyrus rolls and delivered by messengers) several times a day; in ancient Rome wall posts were actually written on the walls of villas; the world's first post that went viral was Martin Luther's famous Ninety-Five Theses, which he nailed to the door of a German church in 1517, unleashing the Reformation; the first tweets were almost certainly those by Sir John Harrington, a courtier of the Elizabethan era and a godson of the English queen (he came to be known as "Saucy Godson" for his quips); while a series of pamphlets by the English poet John Milton in the 1640s - variously attacking the Church of England, arguing for the legalisation of divorce, and defending the right to free speech - were history's first blogs.So writes Tom Standage, digital editor at The Economist, and an author of six history books, in Writing on the Wall. He argues that social media was not born in the 21st century; it ha

New media, old idea

"Regeneration was an everyday duty," writes Sir Alex Ferguson in his latest book, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography. Of course, Ferguson would know all about regeneration: he lorded it over English football with Manchester United and became one of the world's greatest football managers during his 27-year reign

Fergie's command and control

Before you read on, let's get the elephant out of the room: this book has won the 2013 Man Booker Prize and its author, Eleanor Catton, is the youngest ever to do so. And it is not objective of the review to comment on whether the book deserved the prize or not.The Luminaries tells a fantastic story - though it could have been done in fewer pages - and uses several interesting narrative devices to do that. It is also possible that this book will unleash a rush of fictional tomes in the market; Garth Risk Hallberg's 900-page debut novel that has set the publishing world aflutter is a case in point.This book, like many worthy predecessors in film and print, is inspired by the gold rushes of the 19th century. Writers have been drawn towards those events and the emotions fuelled by greed for the yellow metal and several have turned them into riveting accounts, fictional as well as non-fictional. Ms Catton's research into the period is impeccable, as is her mastery over her craft. What, how

In the shadow of the stars

If you want everyone to love you," Saul Bellow wrote, "don't discuss Israeli politics." Yet when Bellow went to Israel for several months in 1975 to research a nonfiction book, all he did was talk politics - and everything else. It was what he loved best about Israel, the "gale of conversation".Ari Shavit's new book, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, is a gale of conversation, of feeling, of foreboding, of ratiocination. It takes a wide-angle and often personal view of Israel's past and present, and frequently reads like a love story and a thriller at once. That it ultimately becomes a book of lamentation, a moral cri de coeur and a ghost story tightens its hold on your imagination.Mr Shavit is an eminent Israeli journalist, a columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, a television commentator, a man of the left, the possessor of a well-stocked mind. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.My Promised Land combines road trips, interviews, m

Son of Israel, caught in the middle

India does not have an official document on its foreign policy objectives or defence strategy. The Indian system fights shy of open expression of a strategic doctrine. In this vacuum, the eight distinguished co-authors of this book have joined together - which, in itself, is unusual - in singular public service, presenting their cogent take on what ought to be India's doctrine. This follow-up to the February 2012 monograph, "Non-Alignment 2.0", takes into account the discussion that the paper had generated. This is a sound method for open debate and building consensus on the nation's foreign policy priorities. The fact that the 2012 monograph involved participation by senior national security secretariat officials adds to the value of this new publication.This is a short work, not a scholarly tome. Consider some of its strong points: a clear distinction between the Non-Aligned Movement ("a pale legacy from the past") and non-alignment ("a strategic doctrine underpinning India's foreign

Non-alignment after the Cold War

It would be tough to find an Indian who has never been a Sachin Tendulkar fan. I was one myself and bought a cake or a kilo of coconut macaroons to distribute to friends every time Tendulkar scored a century. Then this enthusiasm started telling on my wallet and I prudently replaced the sweet treats with a shared whoop and high fives. Later still, with a personal declaration nowhere on the horizon, Tendulkar's centuries - now well spaced out even for the most strained wallet - elicited only casual interest. Therefore, when Tendulkar faced the final ball of his international career recently, it wasn't with too much sadness that I watched him. I saw him play that upper cut into the West Indian slip fielder's hands not with a sense of loss but simply as part of anecdotal history.Yet before Darren Sammy took that catch off Narsingh Deonarine, there was a veritable circus built around Tendulkar's last Test matches in Kolkata and Mumbai. Immediately after, there was more tumult with the rath

Tendulkar, for the record

As BBC's Middle East bureau chief between 2010 and 2013, Paul Danahar had an invaluable ringside view of the extraordinary events shaping the region when the tyrannical regimes of the Old Middle East were coming to an end as a consequence of people's protests. In a sense, this was the endgame of the Cold War and of the collapse of the Soviet Union. "In the Old Middle East the unholy alliance between 'the land of the Free' and the world of dictatorships limped on because no one knew what else to do," Mr Danahar writes. It was people like ordinary school teachers, farmers and accountants who created a New Middle East, which "is a process, not a result and the present reality is religion, not nationalism or Arabism, is now the dominant force". This is the context of eight very well-written chapters dealing with Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Iraq, Libya and Syria.The Arab Spring began with the collapse of dictatorship in tiny Tunisia (2011) and spread to Egypt, where the famous Tahrir Square dem

West Asia's failed revolution

Negotiation is a skill that everyone uses in daily life. Whether it's the best deal for your new car, or the question of whether you or your spouse should be dropping the children to school, swinging the deal in your favour requires a certain level of expertise in negotiation. And since there is negotiation in almost every aspect of life, there are tonnes of books on negotiation. But most of the literature on negotiation is either heavy on theory or it takes a problem-solving approach. Under the second category, you have either the buyer's approach to negotiation or the salesperson's approach. An overwhelming majority tends to approach negotiation within a win-lose framework, the idea being to demonstrate how to get the most possible value at the least possible risk.The two books under review clearly break away from that format. The common message in both books is to think win-win rather than win-lose. In other words, they advocate seeking ways to increase the size of the pie so that b

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The book, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an, charts the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in 16th-century Europe and migration to America a century later

People of the book

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.

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