Sunday, August 31, 2003		Books

US foreign policy and politics
Harbans Singh
US National Security: Struggle for Supremacy in Policy Making: 1969-1989
by P.M. Kamath. Shipra, Delhi. Pages 222. Rs 550.
THE object of P.M. Kamath’s book is to study the role of institutionalised advisory groups having definite formal or legal relationship with the President of the US, in determining national security policy, though much more crucial and influential advice might be coming the President’s way from his wife.

Roller-coaster ride of joys, sorrows & love
Aditi Garg
Mila in Love
by Dina Mehta
Penguin Books. Pages 267. Rs 295.
AS far as films and novels are concerned, the theme of love is never stale. Dina Mehta’s novel, Mila in Love, also follows the same trend — though the approach is not usual and ordinary. Her first novel, And Some Take a Lover, was based on a Parsi family’s allegiances that were at odds with the general sentiment prevailing in the country during the Quit India movement.

Single but not footloose or fancy-free
Kamaldeep Toor
For Matrimonial Purposes
by Kavita Daswani. Harper Collins, London. Pages 325. £6.99.
FOR Matrimonial Purposes is a light, comic novel about the ever-so-important institution of marriage in India. It deals, albeit playfully, with the problems that an arranged marriage poses to young, independent and liberated women in the contemporary social milieu of India.

Bookmark
How viable is it for writers to be activists?
Suresh Kohli
ONE always thought Shashi Deshpande was a very clear-headed person. That was the message evident in almost all her fictional writings. Her characters were normal, though not necessarily rational and level-headed, human beings struggling to find their ways through tricky as well as simple mundane situations.

World War II was a tragedy for the Germans too
Amar Nath Wadehra
On the Natural History of Destruction
by W. G. Sebald (translated from German by Anthea Bell). Alfred A. Knopf, Canada. Pages 202. $34.95.
TRUTH has many facets, dimensions and phases. This is as true of truths associated with war as with any other phenomenon. It is axiomatic that historical accounts treat the victor more kindly than these treat the victim. Man’s capacity to justify his acts of aggression is infinite.

The contours of Sikhism
B.S. Thaur
Hand Book on Sikhism
by Surinder Singh Johar National Bookshop, Delhi.
Pages 198. Rs 150
SIKHISM is a vibrant religion not only because it is the youngest of all the established religious faiths of the world but also owing to its unique tenets. To mention a few, oneness of God, cosmopolitan outlook, no caste—only Khalsa, shorn of rituals, distinct identity of its followers.

Punjabi literature
Pining for the idyllic
Jaspal Singh
NABHA was once made famous by Bhai Kahan Singh, the compiler of Gurushabd Ratnakar Mahan Kosh (encyclopaedia of Sikh literature). Now the efforts of another Nabha-based family, led by B.S. Bir, might retain this town on the literary map of Punjab. Bir brings out three important Punjabi monthlies, Mehram, Ghar Shingar and Modern Kheti, from Nabha. The combined circulation of all these journals runs into lakhs.

Write view
The boss of all management techniques
Randeep Wadehra
Boss Management
by Meena Nanda. Vikas Publishing. Pages xv+222. Rs 180.
ON Mumbai’s sidewalks I’d often come across poster-sellers peddling the lewd, the hilarious and the sublime. One poster that attracted me the most showed a chimpanzee on a chair ‘talking’ on the telephone, with the legend "Boss is always right". The behaviour of a simian, like that of a boss, is invariably unpredictable — hence the honcho-as-chimp.

Breaking the barriers to universal education
B.B. Goel
Community Participation and Empowerment in Primary Education
edited by R. Govinda and Rashmi Diwan. Sage, Delhi. Pages 255. Rs 295.
NETWORKING within the public, private and governmental framework ensures that public funds are leveraged and the quality of service is improved, thus yielding better value for money.

Pain of living under Taliban
Kanwalpreet
Afghanistan: From Terror to Freedom
by Apratim Mukarji. Sterling Publishers, New Delhi. Pages 321. Rs 500.
"TRUE peace is not merely the absence of tension but is the presence of justice and brotherhood." These words of Martin Luther King can be satisfactorily applied on Afghanistan. This book by Apratim Mukarji, a senior journalist, attempts to highlight all those facts that the world has known all along but ignored—Afghanistan and the misery of its people is brought forth in a dissection of its turbulent recent past.