India Books - Page 2

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 (Vintage)

William Dalrymple

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 42 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this evocative study of the fall of the Mughal Empire and the beginning of the Raj, award-winning historian William Dalrymple uses previously undiscovered sources to investigate a pivotal moment in history.

The last Mughal emperor, Zafar, came to the throne when the political power of the Mughals was already in steep decline. Nonetheless, Zafar—a mystic, poet, and calligrapher of great accomplishment—created a court of unparalleled brilliance, and gave rise to perhaps the greatest literary renaissance in modern Indian history. All the while, the British were progressively taking over the Emperor's power. When, in May 1857, Zafar was declared the leader of an uprising against the British, he was powerless to resist though he strongly suspected that the action was doomed. Four months later, the British took Delhi, the capital, with catastrophic results. With an unsurpassed understanding of British and Indian history, Dalrymple crafts a provocative, revelatory account of one the bloodiest upheavals in history.

City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

William Dalrymple

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A great book for insight on multi-layered cultures of Delhi 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I was born and brought up in Delhi, and lived there for 21 years of my life, after which I emigrated to the United States. This book made me feel that how oblivious many of us 'locals' are, of the many riches and insights that my home city has to offer.

William Dalrymple peels the multilayered culture of the historical city of Delhi - seven times the capital of empires - ruined and rebuilt again. He spans from the Punjabi immigrants that've filled the newer parts of economically booming Delhi sice the partition of India in 1947; to the more historic but now decrepit old Delhi - where the legendary age old 'Persian' customs such as the 'Kabootar' (Pegion) fights, the 'Chor' (Thief) Bazaars and the mysterious 'Hakims' (Doctors practicing an old school of medicine) are unquestioned parts of the daily lives of many. Dalrymple also describes the curious and unique collision of history leading to the current day fate of the Indian Hijras (Eunuchs), who ring the door bells of apartments of Delhi's denizens, in the old city and the new, on any kind of festivity. He describes the fascinating history and architecture of the tomb of Himayun and Hazrat Nizam-ud-din, the charming old 'Quawaalis' (musical forums) still alive there, and many other monuments that I visited umpteen times as a kid, the 'Sadhus', an ancient culture intact with flavors... the list is endless. Somehow, I missed making the connections, and could see the beauty of the entire kaliedoscope when I read this book. I find my visits to Delhi so much more fascinating. One thing that the readers must be made aware though is the overt focus on history of Mughal (Persian) Delhi - which is for a reason - that all the pre-Mughal monuments were destroyed. The Delhi that exists is newer than the spirit of the city really is.

Since I read this book I always try to find such books on the cities I've visited. A strong recommend for anyone visiting Delhi -- you can choose to be put off by the seeming boorishness of the existing 'New' Delhi, or scratch beneath the surface and discover magic!

Editorial Review:

Sparkling with irrepressible wit, City of Djinns peels back the layers of Delhi's centuries-old history, revealing an extraordinary array of characters along the way-from eunuchs to descendants of great Moguls. With refreshingly open-minded curiosity, William Dalrymple explores the seven "dead" cities of Delhi as well as the eighth city-today's Delhi. Underlying his quest is the legend of the djinns, fire-formed spirits that are said to assure the city's Phoenix-like regeneration no matter how many times it is destroyed. Entertaining, fascinating, and informative, City of Djinns is an irresistible blend of research and adventure.

India: In Word and Image

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A masala of color, light and texture. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Between the covers of Eric Meola's staggeringly beautiful India in Word and Image is a vision as large and dynamic as India itself. In a similar way to his first book, Last Places on Earth, Meola's peripatetic photography takes us on a journey to reveal the pride and dignity of a culture living in an ever-shrinking world of globalization and instant communication. Yet his new book goes further: through his lens we enter the soul of a country full of color and an unrestrained enthusiasm for life. From the riotously colorful celebration of Holi to a lone, meditating monk under a bodhi tree, the photography of one of the medium's true masters shows us an amazing part of the world.

The immediacy of Meola's photography is breathtaking, whether he's focusing on an expansive vista or some minute detail that he has found and wants to share with us. Viewing the many and varied portraits throughout the book, I feel as if I'm looking not at images printed on a page, but directly into the eyes of the subject.

The inclusion of writings on India by Tagore, Narayan, Rushdie, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri and several other great writers of India help make this a very illuminating and moving book.

A Gujarati friend taught me a useful phrase in his language: "Salu che." It is good. But that doesn't begin to describe this astounding book.

Editorial Review:

India is rapidly becoming one of the pre-eminent leaders of the twenty-first century. For more than a decade, Eric Meola has returned repeatedly to India, photographing the people, temples, landscapes, architecture, celebrations, and art of this uniquely exuberant and incredibly diverse country. Meola's journeys took him from the Himalayas and monasteries in the North to the temples of Tamil Nadu in the South, from the color and pageantry of Rajasthan in the West to the tea plantations of Darjeeling in the East. Over 200 photographs (edited from more than 25,000 images) will fill this beautifully printed, large-format book. The photographs will be accompanied by dozens of essays, stories, and poems by contemporary and classical Indian writers.

Seven Years in Tibet

Heinrich Harrer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 84 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A personal quest for spirituality in the Himalayas becomes a classic book 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Adventurous, curious. The books reads like a biography, a travel book, a cultural study. Little by little, slowly, the culture of the distant mountains seeps into the reader's mind to open a welcome window on spirituality.

Seven Years in Tibet 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

'Seven Years in Tibet' is a classic, to place it into historical context here is a "Brief History of Tibetan Travel Literature":

Prior to 1783, the only Westerners to travel to and write about Tibet were a few Jesuit priests and adventurers [[two early narratives are collected in Clements Markham, ed. Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa (1876)]]. These accounts were enough to spark European interest in the region but were too whimsical for ambitious colonialists who had grander designs in need of more specific information. Thus it is not surprising Tibet in 1792 closed its borders to Westerners: a 1783 British East India Company expedition had raised suspicions of Englands imperial intentions. Tibet became "The Forbidden Land", and for the entire 19th century - although many tried - only 3 Westerners reached the capital Lhasa, thus furthering its mystique. By 1904 the British - intending to finally establish diplomatic relations - sent an armed expedition under Francis Younghusband to Lhasa. It was successful, but bloody, causing international outrage [[newspaper reporter Edmund Chandler was there and wrote an account The Unveiling of Lhasa (1905), as were a number of other books by participants. Travel writer Peter Fleming wrote a "full account" in Bayonets to Lhasa: The First Full Account of the British Invasion of the Tibet in 1904) (1961)]]. Kipling's novel Kim (1901) was popular at the time, and it includes a romantic portrayal of a Tibetan lama which fueled imaginations of all-wise spiritual beings, but instead Younghusband found a reality of poverty and "feudal" backwardness.

After Younghusband's 1904 "gunboat" diplomatic mission, Tibet did allow a few British representatives in, but a steady tide of western trespassers kept coming [[as described in Peter Hopkirk's Trespassers on the Roof of the World The Secret Exploration of Tibet (1983)]]. Some of the more notable include Frenchwoman Alexandra David-Neel who in 1923 disguised herself as a beggar and reached Lhasa [[ My Journey to Lhasa (1927)]] - in the same year American William Montgomery McGovern also made it to Lhasa using the same trick [[ To Lhasa in Disguise (1924)]]. By the 1930s modernity had started to make inroads, Tibet's aristocracy began to look outward, the borders were more fluid, and more well known personalities were writing about it in less Shangri-La cliches, notably Robert Byron [[ First Russia, Then Tibet (1933)]], Marco Palli [[ Peaks and Lamas (1939)]], and Fosoco Maraini [[ Secret Tibet (1952)]]. By the time Heinrich Harrer arrived in 1944 Tibet had only 6 years left before the Chinese Communists would invade and a new type of curtain would fall over The Forbidden Land. Harrer's 'Seven Years in Tibet' marks the end of "Old Tibet" (as a nation, and a western "secret land" literary tradition), and the start of a new contemporary era more focused on human rights, indigenous peoples and post-colonialism.

'Seven Years in Tibet' is foremost a great adventure story, National Geographic ranks it #20 in its list of all time best Outdoor/Adventure Literature. Some of the works mentioned in this review are also great adventure tales (David-Neel's book ranks at #55), but what sets Seven Years apart is that Harrer had a personal relationship with the Dalai Lama, the first Westerner to ever do so. The Dalai Lama is now a world figure but it was Harrer who first introduced him to the outside as his personal tutor. They remained close friends for life and it is probably no accident that after Harrer died in 2006 the Dalai Lama announced his "retirement" in 2007, a sort of symbolic closure with the West. In any case, although Harrer was not the first Westerner to reach or write about Lhasa, his war-time adventure and friendship with the Dalai Lama sets this account apart as not only great exploration/travel literature, but an important record of Tibet just before its fall to the Communists, and a history of the early life of the still living Dalai Lama.

Editorial Review:

Originally published in 1953, this adventure classic recounts Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer's 1943 escape from a British internment camp in India, his daring trek across the Himalayas, and his happy sojourn in Tibet, then, as now, a remote land little visited by foreigners. Warmly welcomed, he eventually became tutor to the Dalai Lama, teenaged god-king of the theocratic nation. The author's vivid descriptions of Tibetan rites and customs capture its unique traditions before the Chinese invasion in 1950, which prompted Harrer's departure. A 1996 epilogue details the genocidal havoc wrought over the past half-century.

My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking

Niloufer Ichaporia King

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Read in bed, dream of mangoes 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Some people use cookbooks, I read them. I believe a cookbook, especially an ethnic or exotic one, should be as entertaining as a novel, as detailed as a travel guide, and as warm and witty as a good neighbor's kitchen. It's rare to find a cookbook that fits the bill as completely--and cleverly--as this one. No tiresome list of esoteric ingredients and daunting prep, Niloufer's explanations of products, procedures and substitutions are clear and organized enough for newcomers to Middle- and Far-East cooking to march confidently, yet salted with options for more advanced cooks to flex their jazz and improv muscles. The obsessive attention to detail and organization presciently addresses issues like storage and substitution, often with memorable mirth. (In a description of a recipe that can be successfully "thawed": "Note, I didn't say 'frozen.' Anything can be successfully frozen.") Moreover, she provides a brief and eloquent history of the Parsi people, giving the reader a solid foundation to better appreciate this somewhat obscure culinary creole.

Of course, the deal breaker is, "How's the food?" Well, her Major Ordle's Chutney is the best mango chutney I've ever made (and she explains why), her Mother's Wobbly Cauliflower Custard slides into a pie shell to become God's own quiche, and her masur (without tongue, thank you) is itself worth the price of admission.

Editorial Review:

The Persians of antiquity were renowned for their lavish cuisine and their never-ceasing fascination with the exotic. These traits still find expression in the cooking of India's rapidly dwindling Parsi population--descendants of Zoroastrians who fled Persia after the Sassanian empire fell to the invading Arabs. The first book published in the United States on Parsi food written by a Parsi, this beautiful volume includes 165 recipes and makes one of India's most remarkable regional cuisines accessible to Westerners. In an intimate narrative rich with personal experience, the author leads readers into a world of new ideas, tastes, ingredients, and techniques, with a range of easy and seductive menus that will reassure neophytes and challenge explorers.

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 (P.S.)

Simon Winchester

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Total reviews: 214 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

It may seem a stretch to connect a volcanic eruption with civil and religious unrest in Indonesia today, but Simon Winchester makes a compelling case. Krakatoa tells the frightening tale of the biggest volcanic eruption in history using a blend of gentle geology and narrative history. Krakatoa erupted at a time when technologies like the telegraph were becoming commonplace and Asian trade routes were being expanded by northern European companies. This bustling colonial backdrop provides an effective canvas for the suspense leading up to August 27th, 1883, when the nearby island of Krakatoa would violently vaporize. Winchester describes the eruption through the eyes of its survivors, and readers will be as horrified and mesmerized as eyewitnesses were as the death toll reached nearly 40,000 (almost all of whom died from tsunamis generated by the unimaginably strong shock waves of the eruption). Ships were thrown miles inshore, endless rains of hot ash engulfed those towns not drowned by 100 foot waves, and vast rafts of pumice clogged the hot sea. The explosion was heard thousands of miles away, and the eruption's shock wave traveled around the world seven times. But the book's biggest surprise is not the riveting catalog of the volcano's effects; rather, it is Winchester's contention that the Dutch abandonment of their Indonesian colonies after the disaster left local survivors to seek comfort in radical Islam, setting the stage for a volatile future for the region. --Therese Littleton

Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography

Kathryn Spink

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Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

For years Mother Teresa has appeared at the top of every list of the world's most influential women, in company with Diana, Princess of Wales, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Different in almost every respect from those famous women, she did share one important quality: she was a star. In Mother Teresa, biographer Kathryn Spink goes beyond her subject's public persona to examine the life of a modern-day saint. In the course of tracing Mother Teresa's life--from her birth in Albania to her years in Ireland and then India with the Loreto Sisters to the founding of her own order, the Missionaries of Charity--Spink explores the ramifications of her subject's life and work on the lives of those she labored for and with.

Mother Teresa's frail appearance belied the steely will and public-relations savvy she brought to the task of loosening potential donor's purse strings and attracting attention to her cause. Was Mother Teresa a kind of spiritual colonialist, as critics have charged, more interested in helping the poor die in a state of grace than in changing the conditions in which they lived? Spink discusses this and other thorny questions with grace and honesty, at the same time emphasizing her subject's admirable achievements.

The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (New Press People's Histories)

Vijay Prashad

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A landmark study that offers an alternative history of the Cold War from the point of view of the world's poor.

Here, from a brilliant young writer, is a paradigm-shifting history of both a utopian concept and global movement—the idea of the Third World. The Darker Nations traces the intellectual origins and the political history of the twentieth century attempt to knit together the world’s impoverished countries in opposition to the United States and Soviet spheres of influence in the decades following World War II.

Spanning every continent of the global South, Vijay Prashad’s fascinating narrative takes us from the birth of postcolonial nations after World War II to the downfall and corruption of nationalist regimes. A breakthrough book of cutting-edge scholarship, it includes vivid portraits of Third World giants like India’s Nehru, Egypt’s Nasser, and Indonesia’s Sukarno—as well as scores of extraordinary but now-forgotten intellectuals, artists, and freedom fighters. The Darker Nations restores to memory the vibrant though flawed idea of the Third World, whose demise, Prashad ultimately argues, has produced a much impoverished international political arena.

The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II

Judith M. Heimann

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Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

N ovember 1944: Army airmen set out in a B-24 bomber on what should have been an easy mission off the Borneo coast. Instead they found themselves unexpectedly facing a Japanese fleet—and were shot down. When they cut themselves loose from their parachutes, they were scattered across the island’s mountainous interior. Then a group of loincloth-wearing natives silently materialized out of the jungle. Would these Dayak tribesmen turn the starving airmen over to the hostile Japanese occupiers? Or would the Dayaks risk vicious reprisals to get the airmen safely home? The tribal leaders’ unprecedented decision led to a desperate game of hide-and-seek, and, ultimately, the return of a long-renounced ritual: head-hunting.

A cinematic survival story that features a bamboo airstrip built on a rice paddy, a mad British major, and a blowpipe-wielding army that helped destroy one of the last Japanese strongholds, The Airmen and the Headhunters is a gripping, you-are-there journey into the remote world and forgotten heroism of the Dayaks.

India: A History

John Keay

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Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The history of what is now India stretches back thousands of years, further than that of nearly any other region on earth. Yet, observes historian John Keay, most historical work on India concentrates on the period after the arrival of Europeans, with predictable biases, distortions, and misapprehensions. One, for example, is the tendency to locate the source of social conflict in India's many religions--to which Keay retorts, "Historically, it was Europe, not India, which consistently made religion grounds for war."

Taking the longest possible view, Keay surveys what is both provable and invented in the historical record. His narrative begins in 3000 B.C., with the complex, and little-understood, Harappan period, a time of state formation and the development of agriculture and trade networks. This period coincides with the arrival of Indo-European invaders, the so-called Aryans, whose name, of course, has been put to bad use at many points since. Keay traces the growth of subsequent states and kingdoms throughout antiquity and the medieval period, suggesting that the lack of unified government made the job of the European conquerors somewhat easier--but by no means inevitable. He continues to the modern day, his narrative ending with Indian-Pakistani conflicts in 1998.

Fluently told and well documented, Keay's narrative history is of much value to students and general readers with an interest in India's past and present. --Gregory McNamee