The 21st century has ushered in new kinds of warfare that don't involve soldiers wielding weapons. One type, cyberwarfare, seems to have drawn the most commentary and analysis. A less publicised type of attack, financial warfare, is covered in Treasury's War, a useful new book by one of this strategy's architects, Juan C Zarate, a former assistant Treasury secretary.Mr Zarate, now a senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, makes a persuasive case that a series of financial weapons developed after 9/11, and used mostly by the Treasury Department, have given the US opportunities to weaken terrorists and rogue states as never before. He develops that argument by tracing Treasury's aggressive actions against various American foes over the last decade, whether Al Qaeda, North Korea, Iran, Libya or Saddam Hussein's Iraq.For those of us who start feeling drowsy at the very mention of the words "Treasury Department", this book is an eye-opener. Under Mr Zarate, and

Missiles for a financial battlefield

Readers beware. The self-help/motivation business book genre is back to haunt you in the form of The Superstar Syndrome. Before talking about the specifics of this book, let us examine the formula for the average business book these days. Choose some recurring themes in management literature, such as "understanding the CEO", "how to be a good negotiator", "how to build self-confidence", and so on. Now choose a set of celebrities from business, politics and entertainment to substantiate your theme. Since there is enough information out there about these public figures already, all you need to do is get a little extra information that is not yet public knowledge. The recipe for your so-called nouveau theory is complete.Authors Myra S White and Sanjay Jha have followed the aforementioned formula diligently. In the preface, the authors promise to deliver "a template to follow in developing your [that is, mainly Indian professionals'] career". The book is based on a study of how 60 ordinary

Black hole on superstardom

Business Standard

The Communist Cookbook

A debut novel on espionage and intrigue in the sunset of Empire authentically captures the foibles of army life

Betrayal on the menu

Harry V Jaffa and Laurence Lampert pay elaborate obeisance to Leo Strauss while taking enormous liberties with his texts

Hidden truths

Mankind felt a compelling need to give it physical shape, even though it resides mostly in the head. It's universally coveted, yet it is willingly and freely exchanged. Meet this unique commodity called "money", which is probably mankind's most remarkable - and paradoxical - innovation to date. Stripped of its basic functions and viewed from different vantage points, it has provided grist for every philosopher's mill - explanations for the entire spectrum of human frailties. Money, in short, is intriguing yet simple, notional yet real.No wonder, then, that it has inspired numerous writers across generations. Here's an easy exercise: go to amazon.com and type in "money" in the search bar. You will see the number of books that pop up, including some in the fiction genre (sample Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis, a part of the London Trilogy).  Some of the books written about the history of money have remained outstanding works on the subject. John Kenneth Galbraith's Money: Whence it

Money as 'social technology'

Democracy does not progress by elections alone, says sociologist Dipankar Gupta but by an "elite of calling" that makes bold, transformative decisions

Democracy by an elite

"Not all Germans believe in God, but they all believe in the Bundesbank."Jacques Delors,former president,European CommissionThe book, a commentary on the recent global financial crisis, consists of four parts: "Rise of the Alchemists (1656-2006)"; "Panic (2007-2008)"; "Aftermath (2009-2010)"; and "The Second Wave (2011-2012)". It concludes with "Afterword: Back to Jackson Hole". The collection of material was a massive effort by the author, a Washington Post staffer, in 27 cities across 11 countries between January 2011 and October 2012.The section on history makes it possible to understand the anti-inflation sentiment built into the German psyche after the hyper-inflation of the 1920s and, as a contrast, the scare of deflation in the US after the Great Depression. There were occasions when the euro zone was on the verge of dismemberment not only because of PIIGS (renamed GIPSI, to avoid the pejorative expression) but also because the Germans did not easily agree to play ball owing to

Central banking turned upside down

A rollicking, entertaining read links India's rise as a cricketing power to its emerging superpower status

Full toss

In a life that was relatively brief but exceedingly active, George Orwell was, among other things, a police officer in Burma, a dishwasher in France, a tramp in England, a combatant in Spain, a war correspondent in Germany and a farmer in the Hebrides. Like many people of his era - he was born in 1903 and died in 1950 - he was also a prolific letter writer, and a particularly captivating and thoughtful one at that, thanks partly to the wealth of experience he had acquired.George Orwell: A Life in Letters is a judiciously chosen selection of some of the most interesting of these casual writings, from a 20-year period that included both the Great Depression and World War II. Peter Davison, who selected and annotated the letters, was also the lead editor of Orwell's 20-volume Complete Works and has sought here to distill Orwell's essence, as man and thinker, into a more manageable size and format.The letters are appearing a year after the publication of Orwell's diaries, which focused on

At home at Animal Farm

Lord Ram stopped being a major draw in contemporary politics of Uttar Pradesh from the day that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) veteran Lal Krishna Advani described as the "saddest day" in his life. December 6, 1992, made many Muslims in India realise - as a journalist friend wrote at that time - what "it meant to be a Muslim". In the past two decades, this point became a narrative following a path of progression. The same cannot be said about the dispute over Ayodhya, and about Lord Ram, the mythological idol that is also considered an ideal by large sections of Hindus. Despite laborious attempts by the Sangh Parivar, people in Uttar Pradesh do not take to the streets in the name of Ram with the kind of hostility they once displayed. The first thought that crossed my mind when the book under review landed on my desk was whether the title was a tad dated.In the introduction of his book Region, Nation, "Heartland": Uttar Pradesh in India's Body Politic, historian Gyanesh Kudaisya drew atte

A UP roller coaster

The title of this book aptly reflects current reality. Tata Motors is facing a drop in domestic sales. Its much-hyped small car, Nano, has not attracted many buyers. But the company's low domestic sales have been neutralised by strong volume growth for Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), the luxury car business that many had warned Ratan Tata would be a disastrous purchase. Jewels in the Crown, written by Ray Hutton, a veteran journalist and the former editor-in-chief of Autocar magazine, is the story of how the Tatas, who had no previous experience in the business of luxury cars, managed to transform JLR into a profitable venture - something even Ford failed to achieve.The book is written lucidly, but it leaves many questions unanswered. Nor does it offer new insights into many key events of the transformation. For instance, it doesn't tell you what went on behind the scenes before the Tatas were able to strike a deal. Or why the other competitors - such as Mahindra & Mahindra, One Equity, w

The Jaguar-Land Rover turnaround

As the 50th anniversary this November of the assassination of John F Kennedy looms on the horizon, the debates over his legacy and presidency continue: a procession of "what ifs" and "might have beens," accompanied by contradictory arguments, and informed and not-so-informed speculation. Would Kennedy have avoided Lyndon B Johnson's tragic escalation of the war in Vietnam? Would he have found a way to propel his stalled tax-cut Bill and civil rights legislation through Congress and start a war on poverty, or was Johnson able to achieve these historic goals only through a combination of his bare-knuckled, tactical knowledge of Congress; his personal relationships on Capitol Hill; and his ability to use the momentum of sentiment generated by Kennedy's death?Several schools of argument have arisen. The former Kennedy speechwriter Theodore C Sorensen and the aide Arthur M Schlesinger Jr focused on Kennedy's record and the promise of his vision, creating a sort of bildungsroman portrait of

The man who would be great

Sachin Dev Burman

Born into the royal family of Tripura and trained in classical music, Sachin Dev Burman drew the most satisfaction when his songs entered the popular psyche

In tune with the world

The authors have succinctly argued that if the NREGA has not realised its transformatory potential, it is not an unmitigated failure either

Competing to empower the poor

Philanthrocapitalism is quite a large word to pronounce, and the idea it represents may be hard to swallow. It signifies the change in the world economic order when all bluffs about state social responsibility are called. The state steps away from what we have generally understood to be its duties, such as providing for public welfare, and redesigns itself into a regulator. The business of public welfare is left in the hands of business - more specifically, to philanthropic instincts of businesspersons. The wheel of capitalism-as-democracy comes full circle, with the appropriated social surplus being redeployed - but without the aid of a mediating state. This seems to be the shape of the world that Bill Gates and others who have joined hands to form the Giving Pledge see in the future. Over $200 billion has been pledged by the 92 billionaires, mostly American, who are part of this pledge. However, at least one European billionaire critic of this Pledge has pointed to the tax incentives

Counting on the rich

This book, to use the words of authors David Robertson (a member of the Wharton School's faculty) and Bill Breen (a former writer for Fast Company magazine), tells the story of the "near death, remarkable rebirth, and stunning recent success" of Denmark's family-owned Lego Group, creator of the eponymous brick loved by generations of children. Innovative for much of its eight decades, Lego lost its way when, seeking to renew itself in the late 1990s, it turned its back on its history and began competing for the attention of a new generation of children enamoured of video games, cable TV and computers.By 1993, when 15 years of double-digit growth came to an end, Lego went on a development binge, tripling the number of new toys it launched between 1994 and 1998, in a desperate bid to kick-start sales. Many of them failed, while production costs soared. By the late 1990s, interactive games had Lego's core customers in their grip. When Lego experienced the first loss in its history, in 199

Thinking inside the box

Jesus the loving shepherd. Bringer of peace and justice. Teacher of universal morals. Jesus the rabbi. Jesus the philosopher. Jesus the apocalyptic prophet. Jesus the Christ of faith.People have constructed many different Jesuses. For at least two centuries, scholars have mined the Christian Gospels to "look behind" them, to create a portrait of Jesus, using purely modern methods: the historical Jesus as opposed to the Christ of faith. In his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan follows this long tradition, settling on the hypothesis, that Jesus was a Jewish zealot, a rebel against Rome and the Romans' local agents.Mr Aslan's book has been greeted with unwarranted controversy. Some conservatives seem offended by merely the idea that a Muslim scholar would write a book about Jesus. This should be no more controversial than a Christian scholar's writing a book about Islam or Muhammad. It happens all the time. Nor is Mr Aslan's thesis controversial, at least am

Still a firebrand, 2,000 years later

The love-hate relationship between the Big Two of Asia dates back to the first half of the 20th century and before they fought one of the bloodiest wars in history.

China & Japan: 'As close as lips and teeth'

Amitava Kumar's A Matter of Rats explores several dimensions of the city

The three faces of Patna

The Indo-Pak border conflict and the Indian missile programme form the centerpiece of A X Ahmad's fast-paced debut novel

A Siachen conspiracy

With this book, the distinguished Pakistani journalist Babar Ayaz joins the galaxy of Pakistani writers, such as Pervez Hoodbhoy, Saleem Shahzad, Ahmed Rashid and Khalid Ahmed, who have articulated in print their deep concerns about the path their country has taken and their fears about its future. This trend in Pakistani writing has been apparent over the last 10 years, possibly in response to the proliferation of jihadi elements across their country, the bloody and unabated sectarian violence, and the near-total collapse of governance. Mr Ayaz, appropriately, dedicates his work to the victims of terrorism.In his analysis of Pakistan's malaise, Mr Ayaz has perhaps gone well beyond other Pakistani writers in identifying the "two-nation theory", the basis on which Pakistan was created, as a "genetic defect". This theory, he argues, was propounded by the Muslim elite in undivided India who feared that their privileged position would be diluted in a democratic order. So they pursued the P

Pakistan - A dangerous failure

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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