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Army’s French
connection
Cookie Maini
French Military Influence in India
Lieut-Gen Gurbir Mansingh (retd). USI & Knowledge World, New Delhi.
Pages 106. Rs 990.
Indian
colonial historiography focuses merely on the British stint invariably
eclipsing the French interaction. In clich`E9d historical terminology,
it is the saga of the victor versus the vanquished, in the struggle for
colonial ascendancy.
Violent
tale well crafted
Sridhar K Chari
An Iron Harvest C.P. Surendran India Ink, Roli Books. Pages 326. Rs
350.
The
first thing to be said about journalist and poet C.P. Surendran’s
debut novel, An Iron Harvest, is that it is brilliantly executed
and a great read, and well, even poetic in its measured, evocative
prose.
Solemn,
yet proud
Himmat Singh Gill
Shaurya Sharayu Summanwar. India Connect. Pages 234. Rs 150.
This
is an intense and touching story of a war widow set in the backdrop of
the Kargil conflict, that vividly and authentically mirrors the
challenges and fight for mental space and survival of such countless,
unsung heroines.
Logic
of Science
Kuldip Dhiman
Indian Philosophy and Philosophy of
Science
Sundar Sarukkai
PHISPC, Centre for Studies in Civilizations.
Pages 273. Rs 450.
The
irresistible desire to know and to master the forces of Nature is a
unique feature of the human mind. From prehistoric times, humans have
employed various means to know and conquer Nature. Then, Galileo,
Newton, Bacon, and others changed the way empirical knowledge was
acquired. All dogma and other unreliable means were thrown out of the
window and replaced with a more reliable and testable method of gaining
knowledge.
Religious
identities for women Saffron
Arunima S. Mukherjee
Confronting Saffron Demography:
Religion, Fertility and Women’s Status in India
Patricia Jeffery & Roger
Jeffery
Pages 132. Rs 200
AS
against those who see communal identities as "fixed" and
"central" to how people see themselves, there is a need to
understand that all social identities are fluid, and are continually
re-worked through social praxis. These identities are negotiated and
socially constructed rather than natural or essential.
Plumbing
depths of the mind
Dalip Kumar Khetarpal
Anita
Desai stands out from all her contemporaries in the manner in she subtly
explores the psyche of her protagonists to highlight the mysterious
workings of their mind. This propensity for plumbing deeper into the
consciousness of her fictional beings not only puts her in the
mainstream of European and American fiction, but also that of
international fiction. It added a new dimension to Indo-English fiction.
Let
a hundred memories bloom
Virginia Woolf the cricketer,
the beach belle in a stripy bathing are some of the images in the book,
reports Alice Jones
Snapshots of Bloomsbury: The Private Lives of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa
Bell
Ed Maggie Humm, Tate Publishing, (£25)
While
the lives and works of Woolf and the Bloomsbury set have been
exhaustively documented, this is the first time that 1,000 photographs
from Woolf’s private album and that of her sister, Vanessa Bell, have
been catalogued and published.
Mary
Cheney on US politics
Jennifer Frey
She's
a bit out of her element. Mary Cheney, daughter of US Vice President
Dick Cheney, had made it her business to fly under the radar. She's a
pro at shunning the limelight. As the openly gay daughter of a man
running for office in a party opposed to gay marriage, she took the hits
and let them slide off her as if she were coated with Teflon. Kind of
like Daddy.
UK
leads battle of the books
As
British lore notes, "Where
America leads, Britain follows," but the little island nation
appears to have bucked such assumptions last year in the number of new
books published, according to statistics released by a book- tracking
firm. US-based Bowker, which monitors book production figures and
gathers data from 83,000 US publishers, said that Britain has replaced
the United States "as the publisher of most new books in
English."
SHORTTAKES
Vedic maths
and materialism
Spirituality Unplugged
The Teaching of Vedic Mathematics
From IIM-Ahmedabad to Happiness
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