Book

Managing Public Finances: What public finance documents don't tell you

Economist Anoop Singh's book is a laudable initiative to create greater awareness about healthy public financial management in India

When Manmohan Singh told then-CEC Quraishi -'I will commit suicide'

"I will commit suicide," then prime minister Manmohan Singh had told Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi in 2012 after the poll watchdog chief conveyed his anguish over "loose talk" by ministers on the Election Commission functioning. Singh had also told Quraishi that the Election Commission is not just India's pride; it is the soul of the country's democracy and "if we lose that, we lose everything". The conversation is recalled in Quraishi's forthcoming book "India and I: A Hundred Memories, Not a Memoir'. In his book, Quraishi hails Singh as a leader for whom constitutional propriety was not a talking point but a lived conviction. The former CEC recalls that during an election, in January 2012, in Uttar Pradesh, Salman Khurshid, then Law Minister, promised at a rally that if his party came to power, it would raise the quota for Muslims in jobs from 4.5 per cent to 9 per cent. "The BJP promptly complained of a Model Code violation, which stipulated that no new scheme could b

Gerontocracy In America: Are old people ruining American democracy?

Moyn wants more progress and innovation - so much so that his socialist utopia is inspired by capitalism's creative destruction

China Resurrected: The country's long-playing geopolitical conception

The book engages with the idea that economic clout drives China's position in the world today

Pulling Joe Sacco's book on riots is a joke on publishing, India's freedoms

Sacco's 'reporting' is incredibly granular but there are areas where he can be faulted. Don't let this undermine where his true focus is, in showing how local disputes led to riots

Natasha Walter calls for a feminism rooted in solidarity and renewal

Ms Walter, who worked with refugee women, heard countless stories of women who had fled across borders for their safety. These were stories from war zones, prison camps and detention centres

Indira Jaising's memoir locates justice in constitutional belonging

Running through the memoir is a sustained inquiry into the meaning of justice in a multilingual, multifaith, and deeply unequal society

Yengde's book is a study of how caste survives by crossing borders

Caste has waited out empires, outlasted reform movements, survived the constitutional abolition of untouchability, adapted to the diaspora, found new languages in new countries

Iran's many revolutions: A history of resistance, repression and hope

The authors render the early years of the revolutionary movement through the life of one participant, the Islamic scholar Mehdi Karroubi

The Liver Doctor: Finding humanism and empathy beyond social media battles

In The Liver Doctor, the hero is not the doctor, but the liver itself: One of the least understood yet endlessly fascinating organs in the human body, and the only one capable of regenerating itself

Enshittification: How Big Tech went from innovation to digital feudalism

The mischievous quality of the book's title or the emoji on its cover might mislead readers into dismissing it as lightweight reading

Chapal Rani: A poignant portrait of gender and exclusion in folk theatre

Through the story of a female impersonator in theatres, this book offers a commentary on how queerness exists around us in different shapes, forms, words, and feeling

River Traveller: Hazarika brings alive the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra ecosystem

Mr Hazarika's book will appeal to environmentalists, historians, diplomats, anthropologists, political scientists, bureaucrats, and activists as well as readers who enjoy reading travelogues

Best of BS Opinion: Manufacturing ambition, the next IT state and more

From manufacturing reforms and Bengal's industrial future to Japan ties, wildlife conflict and digital culture, today's commentaries examine India's evolving challenges

What went wrong: A stark reappraisal of Israel's political trajectory

In his new book, Israel: What Went Wrong?, Bartov reflects on what has happened in the two and a half years since that episode

The Future Is Peace: Finding common ground in the Israel-Palestine journey

An Israeli and a Palestinian journey through Israel and the West Bank, crafting a powerful, humane book that makes you believe a path beyond revenge must exist

The Mind Electric : Pria Anand's book bridges myth, mind, and medicine

From sleep disorders to fear of the dark, a neurologist's book explores why the brain functions the way it does

Great Power Games: Vikram Sood maps a world shifting from West to East

Former R&AW chief Vikram Sood's book offers prescient insights into America's decline, partly attributing it to its outdated 'Philosophy for Profit'