Page 42 - Book News

Persuading without coercion

Instead of pressing harder on the accelerator, Mr Berger advises removing the parking brake and wheel chocks

Enablers of authoritarianism

A recurring problem in this book is that most of the clercs refuse to talk to Ms Applebaum, leaving her dependent on the public record and the wisdom of mutual acquaintances

Mahabharata deconstructed

Stripping the epic of much embellishment through its careful reading, Dr Karve comes to the conclusion that, above all, it is a story of stoic people, not superhuman beings

Driving the private sector

R C Bhargava finds the idea of reforming a public sector undertaking and making it competitive and a wealth-creator almost an impossibility

Climate change & its discontents

Yes, climate change is real. Yes, we should do something about it

Maximum government, minimum governance

Book review of The Gated Republic: India's Public Policy Failures and Private Solutions

Rearranging our thoughts

The authors urge people who think of themselves as change-makers to recognise how they collude with the systems they are trying to fight

All (garbled) sound and (little) fury

In his tenure, Mr Bolton was the president's faithful companion on all the president's sojourns and meetings with world leaders

Goa's Hindutva architect

This is a book written with affection and sadness about a man who had the talent and intellectual bandwidth to do anything

All in the family dynamic

It's the kind of detail - memorably specific, fundamentally human and decidedly weird - that gives this book an undeniable power

NPAs are everybody's problem

Vivek Kaul's Bad Money: Inside the NPA Mess and How it Threatens the Indian Banking System provides the answer and I am wiser years after having taken the loan

The evolution of 'Homo Puppy'

Written by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, Humankind argues that we've been trained to be more biased towards the innate "evil" character in humans

Classics & other favourites

Without boring you with what I bought, let me share the three books I've enjoyed reading since then

Lehman & poetic justice

When theatres went dark in March, good plays were left dangling early in their runs

Drumming on discrimination

Caste is, in fact, a structural problem

'There and Back' review: A history of famous travellers and their sojourns

Stewart Gordon has made skilful use of his protagonists' memoirs, letters and travelogues

Love, loss and pandemics

Cromwell insists the rules of families' self-quarantining apply to everyone

A Pakistani in Bangladesh

This book is a great addition to the already rich literature on 1971 and its aftereffects

Gains in translation

Before 1914, there was no proper copyright legislation in India

Portrait of 'The Portrait'

Ms Jordan has drilled down, though, and brings new information about this unconventional first lady to the surface