Sunday, October 5, 2003		Books

Panorama of political immorality
Shelley Walia
Towards a New Cold War
by Noam Chomsky. The New Press, New York. Pages 539. $19.95.
WINDING up his book World Orders, Old and New, Chomsky comes to a characteristic conclusion: As for the New World Order, it is very much like the old, in a new guise. There are important developments..., but there are no fundamental changes, and no "new paradigms" are needed to make sense of what is happening.

Profiting from German thinkers
Kuldip Dhiman
Rationalisation of Social Life
by Jaspal Singh. Kanishka Publishers, New Delhi. Pages 237. Rs 495.
WE don’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time; it is wise to learn from others’ experiences and mistakes. This is the message Jaspal Singh, founder head of the Department of sociology and former Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences in Guru Nanak Dev University, suggests in his latest book Rationalisation of Social Life, a collection of papers that have been published during his long career.

A story told with sensitivity and subtlety
Aruti Nayar
The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri. Flamingo. Pages 291. Rs 395.
THE quote "A dazzling storyteller" by Amy Tan on the jacket seems inappropriate because Jhumpa Lahiri is too subtle to be dazzling. Reading The Namesake is neither being bowled over by the brilliance or eloquence of the writer nor being overpowered by descriptions overly dramatic or intensely lyrical.

IMF’s learning at nations’ cost
G.V. Gupta
Globalization and its Discontents
by Joseph Stiglitz. Penguin, New Delhi. Pages 282. Rs 395.
THIS is a sharp attack on the "Washington Consensus" by established economist Joseph Stiglitz, a Noble laureate and former Chief Economist of the World Bank. Though Stiglitz is not against globalisation or free market, he has challenged the ‘fundamentalist’ outlook of the IMF and the US Treasury for their ‘one size fits all’ treatment of individual economies.

Signs and signatures
Farid’s contribution to Guru Granth Sahib
Darshan S. Maini
THE Guru Granth Sahib is widely known for its visionary catholicity, or for the hospitality extended to non-Sikh poets and savants within its sacred covers. I do not know of any other scripture which has this sui generis character, this unique distinction.

Tales of innocence & experience
Gursheek Kaur
Diksha at St. Martin’s...
by Siddharth Chowdhury. Srishti. Pages 156. Rs 145.
WE all have stories to tell. Either we write them and become writers or they die with us and are lost forever. It is this consciousness that compels Siddharth Chowdhury to pen down a collection of short stories. Diksha at St. Martin’s....These stories have strong autobiographical overtones.

Jehad did not always mean holy war
Rakesh Datta
War and Peace in Islam
Delhi Policy Group. Harman Publishing House. Pages 251. Rs 400.
THE history of Islam is marked with bloodshed and unfortunately people who write about it actually take pride in the fact. This needs correction because, according to the Koran, war in Islam is an aberration rather than a rule.

Kids’ corner
A novel that reads like a film script
Jaswant Kaur
Wizard’s Winter
by Dhruva Chak. Rupa, New Delhi. Pages 237. Rs 195.
GOOD, they say, shall overpower evil and truth shall prevail. At least, it does in this novel if not in real life. Set in a different world, a world where magic has more say than the King himself, where witches and dwarfs are as common a thing as trees and plants, Wizard’s Winter offers more than meets the eye.

Short takes
A low-down on tourist spots
Jaswant Singh
The HarperCollins Travel Guides: Himachal (119 pages); Uttaranchal: Kumaon & Garhwal (108 pages); Ladakh (94 pages); Rs 195 each. Editorial team: Madhu Sethi, Smiriti Bhargava and Madhulika Liddle.
FROM the snow clad Himalayan peaks to the warm seashores, India presents an amazing variety of landscapes and environment that can attract tourists of all description. Its big cities match the metropolitan ambience of any city of the world.