Books of the Week - 30th April, 2022

Akbar of Hindustan
by - Parvati Sharma 

About the Book
Imperfect and extraordinary. The man behind the myth.
Akbar the Great is a familiar figure to most Indians. Hailed as a brilliant warrior, a great administrator and a visionary ruler whose ideas of pluralism and tolerance sought to unify India with all its diversity of peoples and religions, he is also an increasingly contested figure in the national discourse. And familiar though he might be, Akbar is a mystery too, locked in his own legend: a man to admire but difficult to know.
With revealing insights into Akbar’s complex and magnetic personality, this biography is also the story of how Akbar’s ideas and ideals of kingship evolved through his reign; of how he came to concentrate in himself both political and religious authority; of his instances of megalomania, his doubts and his yearning for justice. Rich in detail, and with a cast of unforgettable characters, it sparkles with humour and drama too, as it vividly evokes the world he lived in.
Parvati Sharma’s portrait of Akbar the Great brings alive as never before a man imperfect and extraordinary, who ruled for nearly fifty years and has lived in the Indian imagination for close to half a millennium.

About the Author
Parvati Sharma’s debut The Dead Camel and Other Stories of Love earned her a cult following for its depictions of love and sexuality in urban India, and its ‘lightness [and] lucidity’.She has also written a novella, Close to Home, and two books for children, The Story of Babur and Rattu & Poorie’s Adventures in History: 1857. Her earlier biography, Jahangir:An Intimate Portrait of a Great Mughal (Juggernaut, 2018), was acclaimed as an ‘audacious, conversational history . . . [that] stands out’, and for its ‘psychologically penetrating portrayal’. Sharma lives in New Delhi, where she has studied English literature and Indian history, and worked as a travel writer, editor and journalist. 
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Books of the Week - 23rd April, 2022

The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality
By - Mike Sielski 

About the Book

Kobe Bryant is a legend – The Rise is a fascinating look at his early life and how he became regarded as one of basketball’s greatest ever players. Kobe Bryant’s death in January 2020 did more than rattle the worlds of sports and celebrity. It took the tragedy of that helicopter crash to reveal the full breadth and depth of Kobe’s influence, and by tracing and telling the oft-forgotten and lesser-known story of his early life, The Rise promises to provide an unparalleled insight into Kobe.In The Rise, readers travel from the cracked concrete basketball courts of Philadelphia in the 1960s and 70s - where Kobe's father, Joe, became a playground, college and professional stand out - to the majesty and isolation of Europe, where Kobe spent his formative years and to the leafy suburbs of Lower Merion, where Kobe's legend was born. The story culminates with his leading Lower Merion to the 1995-96 Pennsylvania state championship - a true underdog run for a team with just one star player, Kobe - and with the 1996 NBA draft, where Kobe's dream of playing pro basketball culminated with his acquisition by the Los Angeles Lakers.With exclusive access to a series of never-before-released interviews during Bryant's senior season and early days in the NBA. Mike Sielski's The Rise reveals insights never seen before. For a quarter-century, these tapes and transcripts preserved Kobe's thoughts, dreams and goals from his teenage years, and they contained insights into him and told stories about him that have never been revealed before.This is beyond a mere basket ball book. This is an exploration of the making of an icon and the effect of his development on those around him - the essence of the man before he truly became a man.

About the Author
Mike Sielski is a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer and the author of The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality and several other books. The Associated Press Sports Editors voted him the country’s top sports columnist in 2015, and his previous book, Fading Echoes: A True Story of Rivalry and Brotherhood from the Football Field to the Fields of Honor, was published in 2009. Sielski lives in Bucks County, Pa., with his wife and two sons.
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Books of the Week - Saturday, 16 April, 2022

Trust & Inspire

by - Stephen M. R. Covey

About the Book
Bestselling author Stephen Covey has made it his mission to understand trust in organizations. In his new breakthrough leadership book Trust and Inspire, Covey shows that though our world has evolved, our style of leadership still has not―but it’s time to change that.
Traditionally, businesses have relied on a “command and control” management style, focusing on rigid hierarchies and compliance from employees. Covey argues we must shift from a “command and control” to a “trust and inspire” leadership model. Trusting and inspiring your team is defined by commitment from both sides, with a focus on effectiveness and fostering a growth mindset. It is based on the belief that employees are creative, collaborative, and full of potential; through trust, you can inspire them to do their best work.
Trust and Inspire is a simple yet radical shift in how business must be done in the 21st century and an expansive, visionary, and inviting guide to the future of leadership.

About the Author
Stephen M. R. Covey is a Harvard MBA and the former CEO of the Covey Leadership Center which, under his stewardship, became the largest leadership development company in the world. He is in demand as a leading authority on creating high-performance organizations. He lives in Utah.
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Books of the Week - Saturday, 09 April, 2022

India in A New Key: Nehru To Modi: 75 Years Of Freedom And Democracy
by Narain D. Batra 

About the Book

On the morning of 15 August 1947, when Jawaharlal Nehru, heir to Mahatma Gandhi, the Buddha and the European Enlightenment, raised the Indian Tricolour on the ramparts of the Red Fort, the seventeenth-century palace of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, India was free to make experiments with freedom.
In the seven decades since Independence, the country gradually changed from Nehru’s democratic socialism to Narendra Modi’s democratic entrepreneurial digital India, dealing with its internal contradictions by playing the game of democracy and in the process becoming the sixth-largest global economy. And with Chandrayaan exploring the Moon, a space nation was born.
India overlooks the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean, abridging Southeast Asia with the Middle East. With its immense brainpower and young demographics, India is geopolitically an indispensable nation. Indians play the game of democracy any which way they can: through massive elections; parliamentary debates and no-confidence motions; coalition forming and horse-trading; hartals, bandhs, dharnas, fast-unto-death; and finally, when nothing works, they knock at the doors of the Supreme Court.
India in a New Key attempts to offer an insight into questions like:
- How has India been experimenting with freedom to solve its socio-economic problems?
- Can Modi—like Nehru—create a unified Indian consciousness?

About the Author
Narain D. Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University—a 200-year institution nestled in the Green Mountains of Vermont. His field of academic and professional expertise includes literature, history, journalism, geopolitics, diplomacy, social media, ethics, and most of all, the First Amendment. He is the author of several books including The First Freedoms and America’s Culture of Innovation: The Constitutional Foundations of the Aspirational Society; Digital Freedom: How Much Can You Handle?; A Self-Renewing Society; and, The Hour of Television. For more than a decade, he wrote a weekly column for The Statesman about American politics, culture and technology. He has also written for The Times of India, Business Standard, Mint, The Diplomatist and LA Reveu De L’Inde. He was the editor and publisher of a monthly magazine, People’s Times (Ahmedabad, India). Yoga, meditation and golf keep him going, and going.
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Books of the Week - Saturday, 2 April, 2022

The Line Of Mercy: A Novel
by - Tarun J Tejpal 

About the Book
In the thick air of a coastal town, inside the iron bars manufactured by the laws of men, life explodes with tropical ferocity. Inferno, purgatorio, paradiso, and limbo - always limbo - come together in a frantic soup of sadness and madness. More truths and revelations are laid bare than can be claimed by any courtroom or church.
In his new novel, Tarun J Tejpal takes the darkest of human material and unearths in it the unstoppable surge of the human spirit. Writing in his inimitable tragicomic style he creates a spellbinding world of extraordinary characters and stories never encountered before.
The Line of Mercy is an epic - and utterly original - addition to the universal literature of crime and punishment.

About the Author
Tarun J Tejpal is the founder of Tehelka, IndiaInk and Think; and the author of three novels, which have been published worldwide to critical acclaim. He is married, and has two daughters who work in cinema and in conservation.
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