OFf the shelf
Documenting the 'division'
V N Datta
Select Documents on Partition of Punjab-1947, India and Pakistan, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal-India, and Punjab-Pakistan
edited by Dr Kirpal Singh. National Book Shop, Delhi. Revised and enlarged edition. Pages LXXVI + 789. Rs 995.
In his preface to the volume under review, Dr. Kirpal Singh writes that his present work is a revised and enlarged edition of his compilation which was published in 1991. The partition of Punjab has been a special field of Dr Singh’s study and research ever since he produced his Ph.D. thesis on it. Thereafter, he went to England to collect and compile his material to form a book.

Humorous and satirical vignettes of life
Ramesh Luthra
Selected Stories
by Parashuram (Rajshekhar Bose). Translated from Bengali by Sukanta Chaudhuri and Palash Baran Pal. Penguin. Pages 306. Rs. 295.
I don’t remember if ever I laughed going through any book more than pursuing Selected Stories by Rajshekhar Bose, a legend in Bengali short story of the 20^th century. One smiles, chuckles and quite often enjoys a hearty laugh. The collection in hand presents an excellent glimpse of well-crafted stories enriched with a marvellous variety of characters.

Mother, not a woman
Priyanka Singh
Janani:Mothers, Daughters, Motherhood
Sage. Pages 197. Rs 280
There is, perhaps, nothing more undervalued than a mother and her love. In all her glory, a mother is the quintessential woman who gladly sacrifices her all for her child. A paragon of virtue, an archetypal mother cannot have dreams of her own, for only in their absence can she nurture her child as expected of her.

How bestselling writers work
Dan Zak
Discipline. You need it in November, and you need it to create any work of art, novel or otherwise. Prolific crime author George Pelecanos never wrote a lick of fiction before he was 31, then wrote his first eight books while holding down a full-time job.

Terror tale
Jyoti Singh
Dubious Tactics
By Guru Kay
Srishti Publishers: New Delhi. Pages 307. Rs 145.
Guru Kay is a pseudonym for Lt Col Manveet Singh. A serving commissioned officer of the Indian Army, he has successfully woven his wide-ranging experience gained through seventeen years of service in diverse parts of the country in this fictional debut.

‘Today’s western industrial model does not work anymore’
Novelist, historian and political philosopher, John Ralston Saul, is a unique man and a thinker of Renaissance potential in today’s modern age. In his latest, very celebrated, book: The Collapse of Globalism And the Reinvention of the World, Saul expounds his theory declaring that globalisation like many great geo-political ideologies is stone dead today. He examines, in an unsparing manner, where the world is headed to in the chaos that has followed this massive development.

Facing life like a champ
Randeep Wadehra
My Fight Back from Death’s Door
by V. Chandrasekhar
East West Books, Chennai. Pages ix+121. Rs 150.
When limbs are strong and reflexes panther-like, when one is in the prime of youth and is blessed with rare talent, success in the chosen field is a foregone conclusion, especially when one is ambitious, focused and hard working enough. But when adversity strikes only a true champion has enough grit to overcome. This is the story of the iconic Venugopal Chandrasekhar, the former national table tennis champion who earned the Arjuna Award as well as lifetime achievement award. He was striding towards the acme when the cruel blow of fate in the form of negligence by a reputed hospital turned this potential world-beater into a vegetable.

The world of letters
C. D. Verma
History has it that Sparta and Athens, the two neighbouring city states in ancient Greece, had been at war for many years. Eventually, the Athenian rulers wrote a letter to Sparta threatening: "If we reach Sparta, we will destroy you. Therefore surrender." The Spartan Assembly discussed the letter and decided to send the following one-line reply: "If you reach Sparta!" This is a laconic letter. The term ‘laconic’ denotatively means Spartan, who had the reputation for terseness of speech, involving the use of minimum of words, concise to the point of seeming rude or mysterious.

Memorable notes
Admirers of late shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan and lovers of Indian classical music can leaf through a monograph on the musical legend. The autographed monograph was launched in India recently.

Back of the book
The Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Marketing
by Kaleem Mohammed Khan and Mohammed Naved Khan
Response Books. A division of Sage Publications. Pages 352. Rs 550
In the dynamic field of marketing, new terms, concepts and techniques are emerging everyday. Keeping track of them is very difficult, if not impossible. This dictionary serves as a comprehensive guide to understanding marketing, its lexicon and usage. Marketing is discussed in all its dimensions, going beyond just the meaning of words to their etymology, nuances and current significance.

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