A charismatic warrior
Harwant Singh
Leadership: Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw
by Maj-Gen Shubhi Sood (retd). SDS Publishers. Pages 290. £19.
ADCs and staff officers are known to grow in the shadow of their generals and rarely manage to spin out of the "larger-than-life" perceived image of their bosses. Yet they do get a unique opportunity to observe them from close quarters. Refreshingly, Maj-Gen S. D. Sood (Shubhi Sood) has not only succeeded in disengaging himself from the spell of the all-powerful personality of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, but also has been able to step back and take a broader and compulsively objective look at the making of that great military leader.

In love with Lahore
Rajnish Wattas
City of Sin and Splendour: writings on Lahore
edited by Bapsi Sidhwa Penguin Pages: 392. Rs 395
Lahore is an affair, it has nothing to do with reason...
Cities are like organisms, or more aptly like the human body.. And like human beings they too have a soul. This book successfully encapsules the quest to find Lahore’s soul. As a collection of writings it has a broad sweep, covering the fascinating mosaic of the city through time, space, structure and emotions. The book is broadly divided into seven parts with a collection of narratives, verses or essays pertaining to a particular facet of the city.

The Bollywood dynasty
Rachna Singh
The Kapoors—the First Family of Indian Cinema
by Madhu Jain. Penguin. Pages 371. Rs 595.
WE are our own individual personalities. We are brought up like individual thinking men; we don’t meddle in each other’s lives. But we are like Sicilians: when you need us we gang up. We are like the Corleones in The Godfather." Randhir Kapoor, thus grandly but aptly sums up the legendary status of the Kapoor clan in the Indian film pantheon.

Playing the diplomacy game at the UN
Sridhar K. Chari
The Horseshoe Table
An Inside View of the UN Security Council
by Chinmaya R. Gharekhan Pearson Education, Delhi, 2006. Pages: 328. Rs 550
Chinmaya Gharekhan’s lively, frank, and nugget-filled account of life in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is a worthy addition to the growing list of writings on international diplomacy by Indian diplomats. Gharekhan spent nearly 25 years dealing with the UN in various capacities.

Empowerment for all
Rajesh Kumar Aggarwal
Organizing for Social Change: A Dialectic Journey of Theory and Praxis
by Michael J. Papa, Arvind Singhal and Wendy H. Papa. Sage. Pages 297. Rs 360.
THE six chapters of the book explore dialectical approaches to social change, which has been described as a process where a group of individuals gains control of its future. Social change is also the process whereby poor, vulnerable, silenced and marginalised people of the world gain political, economic and social power and achieve freedom and equality through democracy and participatory governance.

Time to clean up soiled act
Arunima Sehgal
India Stinking: Manual Scavengers in Andhra Pradesh and their Work
by Gita Ramaswamy Navayana Publishing, Chennai. Pages 107. Rs 100.
Manual scavenging in India is lifting and removal of human excreta manually. Though most of us might not be able to relate to the practice, this is an occupation for over 6.76 lakh people who work at 96 lakh dry toilets across the country and are forced to dispose human excreta.

Sensitive soul
Harbans Singh
Canvas—a Book of Poems
by Viky Arya. Rajkamal Prakashan. Pages 155. Rs 250.
A refreshing collection of Viky Arya’s poems has rightly been claimed as a pioneering effort, not only because of the content but also the experimental form of the book. For the discerning, though, the poems reflect the intimate nature of the images, reminding of experiences that are so close to our life. But first about the experiment that this book is.

The power and the story
Christina Patterson
Ali Smith is a writer’s writer, but increasingly, as her sales and the size of her postbag indicate, a reader’s one too.Ever since the publication of her first book, Free Love, in 1992, it has been clear that her continuing obsession is with how stories work. The Accidental comes as something of a surprise. It has three sections, of about 100 pages each, entitled "The beginning", "The middle" and "The end".

SHORT TAKES
Capital options
Randeep Wadehra

• Money and Real Economy
  edited by Masudul Alam Choudhury Wisdom House, Ambala Cantt. Pages: xvi + 29. Price not stated.
  

• Leading Issues in Indian Economy
  edited by Manoranjan Sharma Atlantic, N. Delhi. Pages: xxiv + 279. Rs 550
  

• Studies in Money, Finance and Banking
  edited by Manoranjan Sharma Atlantic, N. Delhi. Pages: xxvii + 235. Rs 550.
  

Writer for all seasons
WHAT the Dickens. Or rather what to do without Dickens now that the BBC has finished its 15-part adaptation of Bleak House. This mid-Victorian masterpiece has been the hit of the BBC season. All credit to a fine cast and a brilliant adaptation by Andrew Davies.

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