'Instant City' chronicles the life of Karachi - of a city in Pakistan that seems to be the only metropolis and yet the dichotomy lies in it being so backward at times, that even its people fail to recognize it. Karachi has been transformed a lot since the India-Pakistan partition and in many ways that most people fail to see. Steve Inskeep brilliantly writes and captures the essence of the...
05:07:34 PM Nov 30, 2011
New Delhi: Rafa My Story, the biography by John Carlin of one of the greatest players in the history of professional tennis, is a true lesson of the benefits that can be derived, if the will to dig deep and get the best out of oneself is taken to the ultimate limit. It provides an amazing account as to how the Spanish bull, Rafael Nadal portrayed as a phenomenon on...
06:37:16 PM Nov 24, 2011
In 254 crisp and scholarly pages (including a rich bibliography), this may well be the ultimate work on Indian Leftists covering a tumultuous period - from when Lenin seized power in Russia in 1917 to when India gained freedom in 1947. These were the decades when Indian Communists could have made all the difference to Indian history; instead they failed, and miserably at that. It was in the 1920s that...
07:52:33 PM Nov 23, 2011
This is a book unlike any other, a fictional cocktail of economics and ethics, religion and spirituality, success and failure. Authors Durgadoss and Raju, with decades of exposure to business and industry, use timeless wisdom from ancient India to weave a great story. Harvard-educated Arjun is once rated one of the most successful CEOs in the world of banking business. In the race to be a billionaire, he embraces a...
11:32:06 AM Nov 19, 2011
When Mark Tully co-authored his first book on India, I'm told he was tempted to sign off after every 200 words. Not because he did not have enough to say, but electronic media drills into you the idea of economy of words. And it's not such a handicap when the subject you choose is a humongous country of over a billion people. Mark Tully has skillfully told the story of...
06:12:53 PM Nov 17, 2011
The 'Sly Company of People Who Care' is a book that lives up to its evocative title. Published earlier this year, it's recently won The Hindu Prize for best fiction. A disclaimer at the start -- I've known Rahul Bhattacharya for a few years, meeting him after his first book 'Pundits from Pakistan' was published. But there's a difference between knowing someone socially, and knowing them through their writing, and...
06:09:30 PM Nov 16, 2011
How often is a cricket team described as the sum of its parts? The power of the collective over-rides that of the individual. It is an enduring cliche that Aakash Chopra bravely turns on its head in his second book Out of the Blue. While writing about Rajasthan's incredible run to their first ever Ranji Trophy title in the season of 2010-11, Aakash paints a vivid picture of the many...
09:11:07 AM Nov 15, 2011
New York: A personal assistant-turned-personal manager to Michael Jackson said the King of Pop had been taking propofol as early as 1999, and that the singer was drugged up ahead of his 2001 30th anniversary concerts. Frank Cascio, who became a family friend to Jackson at age 5 and eventually one of the singer's closest friends and employees, writes in a new book that he first noticed Jackson taking the...
11:32:30 AM Nov 14, 2011
London: A thriller told from the perspective of an Alzheimer's-afflicted murder suspect has won the medical-themed Wellcome Trust Book Prize, organizers said on Wednesday. Alice LaPlante's debut novel "Turn of Mind" takes readers inside the mind of Dr. Jennifer White, a former surgeon whose eroding memories could carry the key to the mysterious death of her best friend. In a statement, the judging panel said the book's "superbly evocative first-person...
03:16:19 PM Nov 10, 2011
Here's a deeply personal account by middle-aged Shimla-based Minakshi Chaudhry, who beat the ghost of breast cancer. Now the sun is shining again for her. "The dark clouds have passed, letting sunshine in," journalist-turned-writer Chaudhry, 41, writes in her latest book, her 10th. 'Sunshine My Encounter With Cancer' narrates her innate struggle and captures the intense experience of her journey to recovery. The first part of the book, "How could...
02:44:38 PM Nov 10, 2011
After the storm and hype that surrounded its release, Shoaib Akhtar's 'Controversially Yours' falls short in delivering what it promised, ironically just as its subject himself did throughout his mercurial career. Perhaps unintentionally emulating Shoaib's time in cricket, the book is short, enjoyable and at times even amusing; yet it is also often inconsistent and, frustratingly, leaves one asking for more. The story begins right at the start, with his...
11:19:21 AM Nov 10, 2011
New Delhi: Actress Deepti Naval has joined the legion of Indian writers with her maiden collection of short stories. 'The Mad Tibetan: Stories From Then And Now', which was launched in Mumbai by actor Amitabh Bachchan, will be released in the capital by director Muzaffar Ali Nov 12. Naval made her debut with the movie, 'Ek Bar Phir' in 1979 and featured in a string of hits like 'Chashme Buddoor',...
01:43:55 PM Nov 09, 2011
It is a muddle of a new kind. An anti-corruption crusade which has united Indians as a single soul after 65 years and a resurgent nation that pines for salvation through its economic policy of vigorous privatisation and lowering of barriers could seem incompatible. Yet they co-exist in chaotic bliss. Veteran journalist and inveterate writer Mark Tully tries to freeze in fine print this blundering nation of 1.2 billion on...
12:56:07 PM Nov 09, 2011
Writing a review about a book on Steve Jobs life is not easy. It is close to being very difficult, nonetheless here is a review of, 'Steve Jobs' by Walter Isaacson. This might sound a bit strange, however I have never owned a single Apple product and yet I am so taken in by the man behind it all. Steve Jobs at the same time was also a person and...
04:33:58 PM Nov 08, 2011
'Candling the Light', an anthology of verses by young poet, diplomat and artist Abhay K., shows the pressures of diplomacy - which does not give the bureaucrat enough time to explore the details of a narrative, but filter its essence through the verse. The volume paints a picture of the poet's life in words - as a boy from Bihar's Nalanda district to Delhi University (DU), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)...
08:04:42 PM Nov 07, 2011