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Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr On their first night at Rashtrapati Bhavan, when Pranab Mukherjee sat down for dinner with his family at the table, formally laid out with plates, spoons, forks and knives, and the President’s sisters and daughter were...

The Herbal Sutra by Madhulika Banerjee. Roli Books. Pages 216. Rs 1,995 From commonly used herbs like turmeric, cumin and carom to the not-so-common Indian nettle, asthma weed and Indian snake root, ‘The Herbal Sutra’ is a journey into the...

SERVING Members of Parliament normally don’t write a book that is not completely hagiographic or meant to apple-polish the target government to further their business interests. But Andrew Charlton is not only a Rhodes Scholar, he is the MP from...

Pushpesh Pant THERE are all kinds of food books. Some are a collection of recipes, others are autobiographical and some claim to be rewriting the history of what we eat. Some enterprising authors trace the journey of a samosa or...

Harvinder Khetal THIS book emanates from author Minakshi Dewan’s experience of performing the last rites and rituals of her father in 2019 as the chief mourner. She could then empathise with the many unfortunate victims of Covid-19 pandemic, which necessitated...

PK Basant WHO were the Aryans? Nowadays, the Aryan question is related to our notions of identity, culture and religion. It is interesting to know that 200 years ago, nobody knew anything about the Aryans. ‘Aryans’ by Charles Allen gives...

Rahul Govind’s ‘The King’s Plunder, The King’s Bodies’ delves into the King’s rights of conquest, plunder and prize, as well as allegiance and subjecthood, establishing a monarchical form of the British Empire between 1600 and 1900, notwithstanding King-in-Parliament. It delves...

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr India-United Kingdom relations have been summed up in a deft narrative in ‘The Reverse Swing’. The author, a veteran journalist who served as the London correspondent of the news agency, Press Trust of India, from 1988...

GJV Prasad What a pleasure it was to read this book. MT Vasudevan Nair (popularly known as MT) is a major Malayali writer and filmmaker. Many awards have been conferred on him, including the Jnanpith Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award,...

Manisha Gangahar The year is 1947. The air of accomplishment and euphoria of Independence is pierced by the agony of Partition; new nations come into being. Histories are in the making and the debris heaping the scene speaks of how...

M Rajivlochan Iqbal S Hasnain’s work is an important addition to the large number of books that have come out in recent times on the rise of Islamism and the strategies that can be used to wean Islamic society away...

The Yellow Book: A Traveller’s Diary by Amitava Kumar. HarperCollins. Pages 183. Rs 699 What does the world look like? I don’t think it looks like photographs. You have to find out for yourself, you have to draw it. David...

Manoj Joshi AN expert on Himalayan and Central Asian studies, Prof Kulbhushan Warikoo has taught for over 30 years at Jawaharlal Nehru University and authored nearly two dozen books. He is also the founder-editor of a quarterly journal, ‘Himalayan and...

Maninder Sidhu WHEN an overtly factual tale is set in the turbulent Eighties in Lahore, there is no mistaking the General and the totalitarian regime mentioned in the book. Obviously, Tahira Naqvi’s debut novel ‘The History Teacher of Lahore’...

Pushpesh Pant THIS is a delightful book in more ways than one. As one turns the pages, one is reminded of the legendary science populariser Issac Asimov, who regaled many generations with his dazzling virtuosity and encyclopaedic knowledge. Ratna Rajaiah...

Ashutosh Kumar THIS volume is third in the series on Mahatma Gandhi that began with ‘Restless as Mercury: My Life as a Young Man’. The earlier volumes, also edited by his grandson Gopalkrishna Gandhi, covered his younger years as well...

Ranjit Singh Ghuman The book makes a valuable contribution to the literature on some engaging and contemporary issues of the agriculture sector, especially from the small farmers’ perspective. Spread over seven chapters, the book is largely based on the recent...

Rahul Verma There are two kinds of people in India: those who love street food, and those — a very, very slender section — who don’t. Sonal Ved, clearly, belongs to the first group. You read her colourful descriptions of...

Vijay C Roy In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, Tata Steel was a rusting plant. Having first produced steel in Jamshedpur in 1912, the company was continuing with dated technology and facilities. Not only this, Tata Steel had...

Mahesh Rangarajan Water, its woes and wonders have for long loomed large in the ecology, cultures and histories of India. Nearly a quarter century ago, the book ‘Dying Wisdom’ by Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain struck a chord by documenting...

Meera Anna Oommen For passengers on flights approaching Port Blair from one of the southern Indian cities, as the plane descends through the clouds, North Sentinel is the first of the Andaman Islands that comes into view. If the...

Bindu Menon In the short story ‘The Death of Makhan Singh’, the eponymous character’s patience reaches a tipping point when his effort to help two grieving women is thwarted at every point. Makhan Singh is penniless but not morally...

Salil Misra India’s struggle for Independence was truly multi-faceted. Each facet made its contribution to the eventual Independence in 1947 that emanated from it. ‘Bandi Jeevan’ by Sachindra Nath Sanyal tells the story of the underground, violent revolutionary strand...

Muslim Politics in Indiaby Hamid Dalwai. Edited & translated by Dilip Chitre.Penguin Random House.Pages 115. Rs 499 Hamid Dalwai’s interviews with Marathi poet Dilip Chitre were turned into essays and first published in 1968. Now translated into English, these discuss...

Debashish Mukerji Utopian Socialism, Fabian Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Syndicalism, Anarchism… with the decisive rightward turn the world has taken, do any of these ideologies even matter anymore? Capitalism (or at best capitalism-cum-welfarism), with the market as...