Archive by Author

A definitive account of the Kargil War by the then Chief Of Army Staff General V. P. Malik…
 
The Indian Army (or rather, The Armed Forces) occupies a special place in India… and this, in my opinion, is unique to our India. The Armed Forces are considered special, inviolate, upright, decent, relatively corruption free – in fact, the last bastion against corruption. Anything that involves the Armed Forces immediately captures the national attention – especially news relating to unsavory happenings, be it war preparedness, military corruption, ex-soldiers etc. The…

 
A great book by the authors, but a very difficult one to review, as it is set in a scenario with which not many Indians are familiar. Secondly, it is a largely fact-based interpretation of historical events, and requires an understanding of the underlying events. Therefore, before getting to the book per se, it is essential to get a feel of the underlying situation in France in 1944, and how it got there. This novel is set in a World War 2 scenario, centering on the liberation of Paris…

Raghuram G Rajan is the only economist who had predicted the global crash of 2007 – the subprime crisis – before it happened; At an event where the focus was on Alan Greenspan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan) Mr Rajan forecasted the crash – and was roundly criticized for this. In his paper “Has Financial Development Made The World Riskier?” the author pointed out skewed incentives in the financial sector, credit default swaps, and the increasing risk profile of banks and warned that the “interbank market could freeze up, and we could well have…

This is a book that has got rave reviews and tremendous fame across the world, a book which supposedly celebrates the phenomenon that is India.
PATKATHA
The book purports to be about how we become Independent, in which endeavour it fails magnificently. Instead, it is all about 2 “heroes” – : Mr. Louise Mountbatten and Mahatma Gandhi. The net effort is an extremely disjointed and disappointing effort that comes across as a work of crass writing. This is particularly because the book has pandered to western tastes and opinions…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Durant
For every Englishman who came to India with original thought, there were 10 who were incapable of original thought, and 100 who were capable of only original evil; Satyagrah was known as passive resistance: nonsense – there was nothing passive about it – Shashi Tharoor
Shashi Tharoor has covered the ground with these 2 brutally frank lines that indict the british; Jaswant Singh far more detailed, as he examined in scholarly detail the divide and rule policy and the eyewash of governance; Versaikar detailed the 1857 reprisals in Jhansi…

 
“One must praise the lone woman, our great Rani, who roamed the fort and defended the city constantly for eleven days while the British bombarded us…”
History… the word conjures up images of drab dates, reams upon reams of uninteresting narrative etc. Only those who are interested in the subject will find it appealing. Thus it was that I, a history buff, spotted this lovely title on the book shelf. It seemed quite interesting from the title, and the aficionado in me was intrigued. I turned a few pages…