History

Born against a background of privation and civil war, divided along lines of caste, class, language and religion, independent India emerged, somehow, as a united and democratic country. This remarkable book tells the full story-the pain and the struggle, the humiliation and the glories- of the worl... More

A detailed and in-depth biography of the Latin language from its very beginnings to the present day from the widely acclaimed author of 'Empires of the Word'.   The Latin language has been a constant in the cultural history of the West for over two millennia. It has shaped the way we think o... More

Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize for History 2007Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic, a talented poet, and a skilled calligrapher, who, though deprived of real political power by the East India Company, succeeded in creating a court of great brilliance, and presided over ... More

Clive Bell wrote this book circa the First World War period and proposed to investigate the nature of Britain's leading war-aim ('fighting for civilisation'). The author intends to enquire what this thing is for which whole generations seem to have fought and for which taxpayers pay. In fact this bo... More

The rituals and narratives of Gajan dominate the spring season in the villages of Bengal. It is a ritual of the common village people created from indigenous sources and heavily laden with symbols of fertilization and reproduction. Rites of Spring analyzes the meaning of these narratives and their s... More

A stunning exposé of how A.Q. Khan set up Pakistan’s nuclear programme, and the role of the United States in the spread of nuclear weaponsBased on hundreds of interviews in the United States, Pakistan, India, Israel, Europe, and Southeast Asia, Deception is a masterwork of reportage and dramatic ... More

Is the traditional, accepted view of the life of Christ in some way incomplete? - Is it possible Christ did not die on the cross?- Is it possible Jesus was married, a father, and that his bloodline still exists?- Is it possible that parchments found in the South of France a century ago reveal one of... More

Winner of the 2005 Kiriyama Prize for Non-fictionSuketu Mehta left Bombay at the age of 14. Twenty-one years later he returned to rediscover the city. The result is this stunning, brilliantly illuminating portrait of the megalopolis and its people—a book, seven years in the making, that is as vast... More

Winner of the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year ‘City of Djinns is a delight. William Dalrymple is in command of his subject, seizes the reader and uses his skill to tempt and tantalize… The book is Dalrymple’s journey into the soul of Delhiâ€... More

In this book Michael Lynch presents an engaging and thoroughaccount of Mao's life and politics, making use of a wealth of primary andsecondary sources. He locates Maoism in the broader context of twentieth-centuryChinese history, discussing the development of the Chinese Communist Party, thecreation... More

‘A wonderful book . . .[a] must for every student of globalization’—N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor, Infosys technologies Ltd.Since humans migrated from Africa and dispersed throughout the world, they have found countless ways and reasons to reconnect with each ... More

The partition of India in 1947 promised its people both political freedom and a future free of religious strife. Instead, the geographical divide effected an even greater schism of the population, benefiting the few at the expense of the very many, exposing huge numbers of the population to ... More

A winner of the National Book Award, the seminal study of the Middle East conflict by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist has been updated with the addition of a new chapter that traces the situation up to 1995. Original.... More

An insightful and powerful analysis of the forces driving global politics today and into the next century. In the summer of 1993 Foreign Affairs published an article entitled ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ by Samuel Huntington. No article, according to the editors of that distinguished journa... More

In India Unbound, acclaimed columnist Gurcharan Das offers a comprehensive view of the economic and social transformation of India from independence to the new millennium. It is the riveting story of a nation’s rise from poverty to prosperity and the clash of ideas that occurred along the way. Das... More

These poems by Tagore written primarily to entertain the children moved many contemporary writers. The beauty and simplicity of these poems translated from the Bengali collection of poems Sishu (1903) are very moving. The Globe in its review (1913) described it as 'a revelation more profound and mor... More

These poems by Tagore written primarily to entertain the children moved many contemporary writers. The beauty and simplicity of these poems translated from the Bengali collection of poems Sishu (1903) are very moving. The Globe in its review (1913) described it as 'a revelation more profound and mor... More

In March 1947, Lord Louis Mountbatten became the last Viceroy of India, with the mandate to hand over 'the jewel in the crown' of the British Empire within one year. Mountbatten worked with Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohandas Gandhi and the leader of the Muslim League, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, to devise a plan f... More