Books of The Week -8th February, Saturday 2025

The New Icon: Savarkar And The Facts by Arun Shourie

ABOUT THE BOOK
Did Savarkar battle a stormy sea when he attempted his legendary escape at Marseilles? Did Gandhiji and he stay together ‘as friends’ in London as Savarkar claimed during Gandhiji’s assassination trial? Did he turn against Muslims because of the cruelty of jailers in the Andamans? What is one to make of his ‘mercy petitions’ to the British? Did he pledge to be ‘politically useful’ to the British and accept conditions for his release that even the British had not demanded? During the Quit India movement, did Savarkar promise ‘whole-hearted cooperation’ to the British? What did he seek from the British? Was Savarkar the one who showed Subhas Bose the path that Netaji then followed?
What did Savarkar think of Hinduism, about our beliefs and ‘holy cows’, about the texts Hindus hold to be sacred? Have our people been suffused with Hindutva as Savarkar maintained? What sort of a State did he envisage? Is Savarkar being resurrected today to erase the one great inconvenience―Gandhiji?
In The New Icon, Arun Shourie delves deep into Savarkar’s books, essays, speeches, statements to answer these and other questions. He exhumes archives of the British government. He takes us through contemporary records. And unearths facts that will surprise you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Scholar, author, former editor and minister, Arun Shourie has, for the last four decades, been one of the most prominent voices in our country's public affairs and discourse.

****************************************

****************************************

www.ebdbooks.com

Our mail order service ships books in India and Overseas

Email: sales@ebd.in, Phone: +91 135 2655192

BOOKS OF THE WEEK - 26TH MAY, 2017

Two Saints: 

Speculations Around and About 

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharishi 

By - Arun Shourie

----------------------------- About the Book -----------------------------

The life of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa ‘enables us to see God face to face’, Gandhiji wrote. Similarly, when someone in his circle was distraught, the Mahatma sent him to spend time at the Ashram of Ramana Maharshi. Such was their stature and influence.

The Paramahamsa and the Maharshi have been among the greatest spiritual figures of our country. They have transformed the lives of and have been a solace to millions. Moreover, in our tradition, words of such mystics are regarded as conclusive. They have evidentiary status: if they say there is a soul, there is; if they say there is life-after-death or reincarnation, there is. Their peak, mystic experience is what we yearn to have, even just once.

But what if several of the experiences they had - the feeling that someone higher is present next to them, the feeling that they are floating above their body, looking down at it; the ‘near-death experience’; the ecstasy; the visions - occur in other circumstances also? Should we think again about their experiences when these occur as points in the brain are stimulated with an electrode during surgery? What if they can be recreated in a laboratory non-invasively? When they occur to ordinary persons placed in extraordinary circumstances?

Did the experiences occur from some ailment? As was alleged in the case of Sri Ramakrishna? From some ‘madness’, which he feared he had? From the fits that Sri Ramana said he used to have? 

What of the experiences of devotees? Seeing the Master where he wasn’t? Seeing the Master, feeling his presence, after he had passed away? Are these hallucinations? Or do they testify to the Master’s divinity? How would conclusions about their experiences affect their teaching? That the world and everything in it is ‘unreal’? 

In the light of their pristine example, how should we view and what should we do about the godmen and gurus who control vast financial and real estate empires today, to whom lakhs flock? Are they the saints they set themselves up to be or just marketers? 

With the diligence and painstaking research that mark all his work, Arun Shourie probes these questions in the light of the recent breath-taking advances in neuroscience, as well as psychology and sociology. The result is a book of remarkable rigour: an examination - and ultimately reconciliation - of science and faith as also of seemingly antagonistic, irreconcilable worldviews.

--------------------------- About the Author ---------------------------

Scholar, author, former editor and minister, Arun Shourie is one of the most prominent voices in our country’s public life and discourse. This is his twenty-seventh book.

ISBN : 9789352645046   Price : Rs.699.00

www.ebdbooks.com

Our mail order service ships books in India and Overseas

Email: sales@ebd.in, Phone: +91 135 2655192

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

MADDADDAM

By- Margaret Atwood

About the Book : 

A man-made plague has swept the earth, but a small group survives, along with the green-eyed Crakers - a gentle species bio-engineered to replace humans. Toby, onetime member of the Gods Gardeners and expert in mushrooms and bees, is still in love with street-smart Zeb, who has an interesting past. The Crakers' reluctant prophet, Snowman-the-Jimmy, is hallucinating; Amanda is in shock from a Painballer attack; and Ivory Bill yearns for the provocative Swift Fox, who is flirting with Zeb. Meanwhile, giant Pigoons and malevolent Painballers threaten to attack. Told with wit, dizzying imagination, and dark humour, Booker Prize-winning Margaret Atwood's unpredictable, chilling and hilarious MaddAddam takes us further into a challenging dystopian world and holds up a skewed mirror to our own possible future.

About the Author :

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. In addition to the classic The Handmaid's Tale, her novels include Cat's Eye, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize, Oryx and Crake and most recently, The Year of the Flood. Margaret Atwood has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once. She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice, and in 2012 was awarded the title of Companion of Literature by The Royal Society of Literature. Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto, Canada.

Out of this journey, A Walk Across the Sun was born. It is a novel that brings together three of Addison's great passions--storytelling, human rights, and the world and its cultures--in a narrative that enlightens while it entertains. Addison is a supporter of international justice causes, including the abolition of modern slavery, and he is committed to broadening this support through the publication of A Walk Across the Sun.

  ISBN : 9781408819708                                                         PRICE : Rs. 699.00