Download or read book A Chequered Brilliance written by Jairam Ramesh and published by Penguin Random House India Private Limited. This book was released on 2019-12-19 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a compelling biography of one of India's most controversial and consequential public figures. V.K. Krishna Menon continues to command our attention not just because he was Jawaharlal Nehru's confidant and soulmate but also for many of his own political and literary accomplishments. A relentless crusader for Indian independence in the UK in the 1930s and 1940s, he was a global star at the United Nations in the 1950s before he was forced to resign as defence minister in the wake of the India-China war of 1962. Meticulously researched and based entirely on new archival material, this book reveals Krishna Menon in all his capabilities and contradictions. It is also a rich history of the tumultuous times in which he lived and which he did so much to shape.

Download or read book Intertwined Lives written by Jairam Ramesh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-06-19 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first definitive biography of arguably India’s most influential and powerful civil servant: P.N. Haksar, Indira Gandhi’s alter ego during her period of glory. Educated in the sciences and trained in law, Haksar was a diplomat by profession and a communist-turned-democratic socialist by conviction. He had known Indira Gandhi from their student days in London in the late-1930s, even though family links predated this friendship. They kept in touch, and in May 1967, she plucked him out of his diplomatic career and appointed him secretary in the prime minister’s Secretariat. This is when he emerged as her ideological beacon and moral compass, playing a pivotal role in her much-heralded achievements including the nationalization of banks, abolition of privy purses and princely privileges, the Indo-Soviet Treaty, the creation of Bangladesh, rapprochement with Sheikh Abdullah, the Simla and New Delhi Agreements with Pakistan, the emergence of the country as an agricultural, space and nuclear power and, later, the integration of Sikkim with India. This power and influence notwithstanding, Haksar chose to walk away from Indira Gandhi in January 1973. She, however, persuaded him to soon return, first as her special envoy and later as deputy chairman of the Planning Commission where he left his distinctive imprint. Exiting government once and for all in May 1977, he then continued to be associated with a number of academic institutions and became the patron for various national causes like protecting India’s secular traditions, propagating of a scientific temper, strengthening the public sector and deepening technological self-reliance. Successive prime ministers sought his counsel and in May 1987, he initiated the reconstruction of India’s relations with China. He remained an unrepentant Marxist and one of India’s most respected elder statesman and leading public figures till his death in November 1998. Drawing on Haksar’s extensive archives of official papers, memos, notes and letters, Jairam Ramesh presents a compelling chronicle of the life and times of a truly remarkable personality who decisively shaped the nation’s political and economic history in the 1960s and 1970s that continues to have relevance for today’s India as well. Written in Ramesh’s inimitable style, this work of formidable scholarship brings to life a man who is fast becoming a victim of collective amnesia.

Download or read book VP Menon written by Narayani Basu and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his initial plans for an independent India in tatters, the desperate viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, turned to his seniormost Indian civil servant, Vappala Pangunni Menon—or VP—giving him a single night to devise an alternative, coherent and workable plan for independence. Menon met his stringent deadline, presenting the Menon Plan, which would change the map of the world forever. Menon was unarguably the architect of the modern Indian state. Yet startlingly little is known about this bureaucrat, patriot and visionary. In this definitive biography, Menon’s great-granddaughter, Narayani Basu, rectifies this travesty. She takes us through the highs and lows of his career, from his determination to give women the right to vote; to his strategy, at once ruthless and subtle, to get the princely states to accede to India; to his decision to join forces with the Swatantra Party; to his final relegation to relative obscurity. Equally, the book candidly explores the man behind the public figure— his unconventional personal life and his private conflicts, which made him channel his energy into public service. Drawing from documents—scattered, unread and unresearched until now—and with unprecedented access to Menon’s papers and his taped off-the-record and explosively frank interviews—this remarkable biography of VP Menon not only covers the life and times of a man unjustly consigned to the footnotes of history but also changes our perception of how India, as we know it, came into being.

Download or read book The Snows of Yesteryear written by Gregor Von Rezzori and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2012-08-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gregor von Rezzori was born in Czernowitz, a onetime provincial capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was later to be absorbed successively into Romania, the USSR, and the Ukraine—a town that was everywhere and nowhere, with a population of astonishing diversity. Growing up after World War I and the collapse of the empire, Rezzori lived in a twilit world suspended between the formalities of the old nineteenth-century order which had shaped his aristocratic parents and the innovations, uncertainties, and raw terror of the new century. The haunted atmosphere of this dying world is beautifully rendered in the pages of The Snows of Yesteryear. The book is a series of portraits—amused, fond, sometimes appalling—of Rezzori’s family: his hysterical and histrionic mother, disappointed by marriage, destructively obsessed with her children’s health and breeding; his father, a flinty reactionary, whose only real love was hunting; his haughty older sister, fated to die before thirty; his earthy nursemaid, who introduced Rezzori to the power of storytelling and the inevitability of death; and a beloved governess, Bunchy. Telling their stories, Rezzori tells his own, holding his early life to the light like a crystal until it shines for us with a prismatic brilliance.

Download or read book Mr Nobody written by Catherine Steadman and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He wants to remember. She needs to forget. . . . Memento meets Sharp Objects in a gripping psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Something in the Water and The Disappearing Act. “Twisty . . . highly imaginative . . . deliciously provocative.”—The Washington Post Who is Mr. Nobody? When a man is found on a British beach, drifting in and out of consciousness, with no identification and unable to speak, interest in him is sparked immediately. From the hospital staff who find themselves inexplicably drawn to him, to international medical experts who are baffled by him, to the national press who call him Mr. Nobody, everyone wants answers. Who is this man? And what happened to him? Some memories are best forgotten. Neuropsychiatrist Dr. Emma Lewis is asked to assess the patient in a small town deep in the English countryside. This is her field of expertise, this is the chance she’s been waiting for, and this case could make her name known across the world. But therein lies the danger. Emma left this same town fourteen years ago and has taken great pains to cover all traces of her past since then. Places aren't haunted . . . people are. But now something—or someone—is calling her back. And the more time she spends with her patient, the more alarmed she becomes that he knows the one thing about her that nobody is supposed to know.

Download or read book The Finkler Question written by Howard Jacobson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-09-10 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "He should have seen it coming. His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one..." Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular and disappointed BBC worker, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick, a Czechoslovakian always more concerned with the wider world than with exam results. Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and with Treslove, his chequered and unsuccessful record with women rendering him an honorary third widower, they dine at Libor's grand, central London apartment. It's a sweetly painful evening of reminiscence in which all three remove themselves to a time before they had loved and lost; a time before they had fathered children, before the devastation of separations, before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it. Better, perhaps, to go through life without knowing happiness at all because that way you had less to mourn? Treslove finds he has tears enough for the unbearable sadness of both his friends' losses. And it's that very evening, at exactly 11:30pm, as Treslove hesitates a moment outside the window of the oldest violin dealer in the country as he walks home, that he is attacked. After this, his whole sense of who and what he is will slowly and ineluctably change. The Finkler Question is a scorching story of exclusion and belonging, justice and love, ageing, wisdom and humanity. Funny, furious, unflinching, this extraordinary novel shows one of our finest writers at his brilliant best.

Download or read book Indira Gandhi written by Jairam Ramesh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-06-10 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an acclaimed economist and politician, a unique, never-before-seen look at the life of one of India’s most well-known prime ministers—Indira Gandhi—and her work to protect the environment and champion the preservation of nature and the climate. Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India for sixteen years, was as charismatic as she was controversial—both admired and criticized for her political judgments and actions. Yet what has never been fully revealed is her lifelong commitment and love for nature and how that defined her very being. Weaving personal, political, and environmental history, politician and scholar Jairam Ramesh presents a compelling portrait of an extraordinary public figure. He chronicles how and why she made a personal passion a public calling; how her views on the environment remained steadfast even as her political and economic stances evolved; how her friendships with conservationists led to far-reaching decisions to preserve India’s biodiversity; how she urged, cajoled and persuaded her colleagues in making significant decisions regarding forests and wildlife; and how her own finely developed instincts and initiatives resulted in landmark policies, programs, and laws that have endured to this day. Drawing extensively from unpublished letters, notes, messages and memos, Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature is both a lively, engaging narrative about the little-known parts of Indira Gandhi’s life, and also sheds important light on climate change and sustaining the environment—today’s most pressing global issues.

Download or read book The Man Who Remade India written by Vinay Sitapati and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When P.V. Narasimha Rao became the unlikely prime minister of India in 1991, he inherited economic catastrophe, violent insurgencies and a nation adrift. Yet because he was unloved by his people and mistrusted by his own party-a minority in Parliament and ruling under the shadow of Sonia Gandhi-Rao lacked the mandate to combat these crises. Yet, Rao was not just able to last a full five years as Prime Minister, he reinvented India, at home and abroad. Few world leaders have achieved so much with so little power. With exclusive access to Rao's never-before-seen personal papers as well as over a hundred interviews, Vinay Sitapati's definitive biography tells the story of India's makeover in the 1990s and the story of the Deng Xiaoping-like figure who did it. Assuming power over an ossified, quasi-socialist economy burdened by inefficient industrial behemoths, Rao was instrumental in driving through a broad set of liberalizing economic reforms that transformed India. Rao's career is the ideal window through which to understand how India became a force in the global economy almost overnight. Sitapati traces Rao's life from a village in Telangana through his years in power and-afterward-his humiliation in retirement. Yet the book never loses sight of the inner man-his difficult childhood, his corruptions and love affairs, and his lingering loneliness. Meticulously researched and honestly told, this landmark political biography is a must-read for anyone interested in the man responsible for transforming India.

Download or read book Evening in Paradise written by Lucia Berlin and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Berlin probably deserved a Pulitzer Prize." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE. Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by The Boston Globe, Kirkus, and Lit Hub. Named a Fall Read by Buzzfeed, ELLE, TIME, Nylon, The Boston Globe, Vulture, Newsday, HuffPost, Bustle, The A.V. Club, The Millions, BUST, Reinfery29, Fast Company and MyDomaine. A collection of previously uncompiled stories from the short-story master and literary sensation Lucia Berlin In 2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published A Manual for Cleaning Women, a posthumous story collection by a relatively unknown writer, to wild, widespread acclaim. It was a New York Times bestseller; the paper’s Book Review named it one of the Ten Best Books of 2015; and NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other outlets gave the book rave reviews. The book’s author, Lucia Berlin, earned comparisons to Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Alice Munro, and Anton Chekhov. Evening in Paradise is a careful selection from Berlin’s remaining stories—twenty-two gems that showcase the gritty glamour that made readers fall in love with her. From Texas to Chile, Mexico to New York City, Berlin finds beauty in the darkest places and darkness in the seemingly pristine. Evening in Paradise is an essential piece of Berlin’s oeuvre, a jewel-box follow-up for new and old fans.

Download or read book Naoroji written by Dinyar Patel and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay–NIF Book Prize The definitive biography of Dadabhai Naoroji, the nineteenth-century activist who founded the Indian National Congress, was the first British MP of Indian origin, and inspired Gandhi and Nehru. Mahatma Gandhi called Dadabhai Naoroji the “father of the nation,” a title that today is reserved for Gandhi himself. Dinyar Patel examines the extraordinary life of this foundational figure in India’s modern political history, a devastating critic of British colonialism who served in Parliament as the first-ever Indian MP, forged ties with anti-imperialists around the world, and established self-rule or swaraj as India’s objective. Naoroji’s political career evolved in three distinct phases. He began as the activist who formulated the “drain of wealth” theory, which held the British Raj responsible for India’s crippling poverty and devastating famines. His ideas upended conventional wisdom holding that colonialism was beneficial for Indian subjects and put a generation of imperial officials on the defensive. Next, he attempted to influence the British Parliament to institute political reforms. He immersed himself in British politics, forging links with socialists, Irish home rulers, suffragists, and critics of empire. With these allies, Naoroji clinched his landmark election to the House of Commons in 1892, an event noticed by colonial subjects around the world. Finally, in his twilight years he grew disillusioned with parliamentary politics and became more radical. He strengthened his ties with British and European socialists, reached out to American anti-imperialists and Progressives, and fully enunciated his demand for swaraj. Only self-rule, he declared, could remedy the economic ills brought about by British control in India. Naoroji is the first comprehensive study of the most significant Indian nationalist leader before Gandhi.

Download or read book Mobilizing the Marginalized written by Amit Ahuja and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: India's over 200 million Dalits, once called "untouchables," have been mobilized by social movements and political parties, but the outcomes of this mobilization are puzzling. Dalits' ethnic parties have performed poorly in elections in states where movements demanding social equality have been strong while they have succeeded in states where such movements have been entirely absent or weak. In Mobilizing the Marginalized, Amit Ahuja demonstrates that the collective action of marginalized groups--those that are historically stigmatized and disproportionately poor ED is distinct. Drawing on extensive original research conducted across four of India's largest states, he shows, for the marginalized, social mobilization undermines the bloc voting their ethnic parties' rely on for electoral triumph and increases multi-ethnic political parties' competition for marginalized votes. He presents evidence showing that a marginalized group gains more from participating in a social movement and dividing support among parties than from voting as a bloc for an ethnic party.

Download or read book Songs of the Earth written by Elspeth Cooper and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2012-02-28 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of Eador, Abjurations 12:14, is very clear: Suffer ye not the life of a witch. For a thousand years, the Church Knights have obeyed that commandment, sending to the stake anyone who can hear the songs of the earth. There are no exceptions, not even for one of their own. Novice Knight Gair can hear music no one else can, beautiful, terrible music: music with power. In the Holy City, that can mean only one thing: death by fire—until an unlikely intervention gives him a chance to flee the city and escape the flames. With the Church Knights and their witchfinder hot on his heels, Gair hasn't time to learn how to use the power growing inside him, but if he doesn't master it, that power will tear him apart. His only hope is the secretive Guardians of the Veil, though centuries of persecution have almost destroyed their Order, and the few Guardians left have troubles of their own. For the Veil between worlds is weakening, and behind it, the Hidden Kingdom, ever-hungry for dominion over the daylight realm, is stirring. Though he is far from ready, Gair will find himself fighting for his own life, for everyone within the Order of the Veil, and for the woman he has come to love. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book Cosi Fan Tutti written by Michael Dibdin and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2008-12-30 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Aurelio Zen Novel Michael Dibdin's overburdened Italian police inspector has been transferred to Naples, where the rule of law is so lax that a police station may double as a brothel. But this time, having alienated superiors with his impolitic zealousness in every previous posting, Zen is determined not to make waves. Too bad an American sailor (who may be neither American nor a sailor) knifes one of his opposite numbers in Naples's harbor, and some local garbage collectors have taken to moonlighting in homicide. And when Zen becomes embroiled in a romantic intrigue involving love-sick gangsters and prostitutes who pass themselves off as Albanian refugees, all Naples comes to resemble the set of the Mozart opera of the same title. Bawdy, suspenseful, and splendidly farcical, the result is an irresistible offering from a maestro of mystery.

Download or read book Medical Firsts written by Robert E. Adler and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2008-04-21 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of medical discoveries-from the ancient Greeks to the present "Always help, or at least do no harm." Following this simple yet revolutionary idea, Hippocrates laid the foundation for modern medicine over two millennia ago. From the Hippocratic Oath to the human genome, from Pasteur's germ theory to the worldwide eradication of smallpox, Medical Firsts brings to life 2,500 years of medical advances and discoveries. Organized chronologically, the book describes each milestone in a vivid capsule history, making it a fascinating and wonderfully readable resource for anyone interested in medicine's past progress and future promise. Robert E. Adler, PhD (Santa Rosa, CA) has worked as a psychologist and science journalist. He writes about a wide variety of scientific and medical topics for New Scientist, Nature, and other publications and is the author of Science Firsts (0-471-40174-9).

Download or read book The Theory of State written by Johann Caspar Bluntschli and published by . This book was released on 1892 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Furious Devotion written by Richard Balls and published by . This book was released on 2024-06-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paperback edition has been fully updated to include Shane's final months and the response to his passing. Punk protagonist, legendary drinker, Irish musical icon. This is the complete and extraordinary journey of the Pogues' notorious frontman from outcast to national treasure. A Furious Devotion vividly recounts the experiences that shaped the greatest songwriter of his generation, including the formative trips to his mother's homestead in Tipperary and the explosion of punk which changed his life. As well as exclusive interviews with Shane himself, author Richard Balls secured contributions from his wife and family, and people who have never spoken publicly about Shane before: close associates, former girlfriends and the English teacher who first spotted his literary gift. Nick Cave, Aidan Gillen, Cillian Murphy, Christy Moore and Sinead O'Connor are on the rollcall of those paying tribute to the gifted songwriter and poet. This frank and extensive biography includes many previously unseen personal photographs.

Download or read book 50 Greatest Short Stories written by Terry O'Brien (Quiz master) and published by Rupa Publications India. This book was released on 2015-11-18 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 50 Greatest Short Stories is a selection from the best of the world's short fiction, bringing together writings by great masters of the genre. Carefully picked for their timeless quality, readers are sure to be delighted by the inclusion of such favourites as 'The Gift of the Magi', 'The Lady with the Dog', 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', 'Rain' and 'Mrs Packletide's Tiger', to name but a few. This outstanding and wide-ranging anthology of stories is a collector's item, designed for readers to refresh their acquaintance with some of the world's finest writing and for newer readers to be introduced to it. Anton Chekov, Charles Dickens, Katherine Mansfield, Guy de Maupassant, F. Scott Fitzgerald, H. Rider Haggard, O. Henry, Rudyard Kipling, W.W. Jacobs, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Saki, Jerome K. Jerome, H.G. Wells, Kate Chopin, Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, Frank Stockton, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen Leacock, James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Joseph Conrad, M. R. James, W. Somerset Maugham, R. L. Stevenson.