Page 3 - Books

Nautch Boy: Manish Gaekwad's book sheds light on lives of boys in a 'kotha'

Nautch, a corrupted pronunciation of naach, fascinated the author in his childhood. As a practice, the tawaifs didn't let their children near their performances and patrons

SC dismisses plea seeking ban on Salman Rushdie's book 'The Satanic Verses'

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a plea seeking a direction to ban Salman Rushdie's controversial novel "The Satanic Verses". The plea came up for hearing before a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta. The counsel appearing for the petitioners referred to the Delhi High Court's November last year order. The high court had closed the proceedings on a petition challenging the Rajiv Gandhi government's decision to ban the import of "The Satanic Verses" in 1988, saying since authorities have failed to produce the relevant notification, it has to be presumed that it does not exist. "You are effectively challenging the judgement of the Delhi High Court," the bench observed, while dismissing the plea. The petition was filed in the apex court through advocate Chand Qureshi. It alleged the book was available due to the order passed by the high court. The Centre had banned the import of the Booker Prize-winning author's "The Satanic Verses" for law-and-order rea

Missing from the House: Tracing the political legacy of Muslim women MPs

Despite exclusion and patriarchy, 18 Muslim women have entered the Lok Sabha to date - but their absence from public discourse is stark. This book recalls their political legacy

Mujib's blunders: Manash Ghosh's book reveals how Rahman lost plots

The Power and the Plot Behind His Killing, "covers the troubled years after the freedom struggle, popularly known as the Liberation War, against the genocidal Pakistan Army"

Song of India: New book clarifies why Tagore composed the national anthem

Several songs competed to become India's anthem after Independence. Dr Mukherjee's book debunks myths about why Tagore composed his song and how it came to be chosen

S Muralidhar's book spotlights SC's fault lines and judicial fallibility

In the current discourse on the basic law of the country, the Constitution, leaders of both the ruling and the Opposition blocs are engaged in its competitive veneration, pronouncing it sacrosanct

The Wisdom of Plagues: Book traces lessons not learned from pandemics

Covid-19 was the saddest pandemic NYT reporter Donald G McNeil ever covered. Now he shows how outbreaks like AIDS and Ebola foreshadowed the next in patterns, responses, and impact

Facing a 'reading crisis,' Denmark to make books cheaper by cutting tax

The Danish government announced this week that it planned to make books exempt from a 25 percent value-added tax

Meet the Savarnas: Ravikant Kisana's book on millennials and exclusion

For a society so deeply entrenched in caste and class, the cognitive dissonance is astonishing. Caste is ancient history one moment, yet dictates marriage or who works at your house the next

Inside India's polls: flaws, fraud, and the battle to save democracy

Author SY Quraishi dwells on the Model Code of Conduct and other aspects of holding elections, including the role of exit polls, media and hate speech

Can you make peace with your smartphone? Two books explore the idea

With this book, the author calcifies some of the deposits heavy phone use has left on her soul

India in Flux offers up new ways to think about complex challenges ahead

Few could have played the role Shankar Acharya did-navigating political, fiscal, and global pressures with clarity and conviction

A Billion Butterflies: This book drops truth bombs on climate change

How an old deal over a supercomputer explains the politics behind climate science today

Mehran Gul's debut book decodes the innovation ecosystem through its people

We see the United States as the source of just about all the technologies that define modern life, and most of the companies that created them are based there. But is that changing

The Johnson & Johnson Files: Unhealthy truths and defective hip implants

A tale of defective hip implants exposes India's weak medical oversight - and how multinationals treat Indian patients worse than those in rich countries

'Drugstore beetle' endangers 1,000-year-old library, 100,000 books

Tens of thousands of centuries-old books are being pulled from the shelves of a medieval abbey in Hungary in an effort to save them from a beetle infestation that could wipe out centuries of history. The 1,000-year-old Pannonhalma Archabbey is a sprawling Benedictine monastery that is one of Hungary's oldest centres of learning and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Restoration workers are removing about 100,000 handbound books from their shelves and carefully placing them in crates, the start of a disinfection process that aims to kill the tiny beetles burrowed into them. The drugstore beetle, also known as the bread beetle, is often found among dried foodstuffs like grains, flour and spices. But they also are attracted to the gelatin and starch-based adhesives found in books. They have been found in a section of the library housing around a quarter of the abbey's 400,000 volumes. This is an advanced insect infestation which has been detected in several parts of the library, so the en

Tribals and the Hindutva framework: New book explores RSS's evolving views

From Sarna to Ghar Wapsi, this book breaks new ground on the evolution of RSS's thinking on tribals and complex questions such as their treatment after conversion to Christianity

Kulpreet Yadav's Dial 100: A taut true crime ode to India's overworked cops

Crime is never pleasant to read about or watch - let alone experience. But true stories remind us to stay alert and recognise the warning signs of danger

The New Age of Sexism: Laura Bates' latest book exposes online misogyny

Feminist activist Laura Bates turns her investigative lens on the insidious spread of online misogyny - now assuming new virtual avatars, yet still rooted in age-old patriarchal violence

Proto: Laura Spinney's new book explores the journey of global PIE

Beyond the hypotheses of origin and its subsequent demise and immortalisation, there is a huge world of learning for anyone looking to understand the evolution of languages and even, humankind