Loom of God

Clifford A. Pickover has written dozens of books and hundreds of articles, and for many years was the lead columnist for Discover magazine’s “Brain-Boggler.” He is especially known for Mind-Bending Visual Puzzles, his calendar and card sets. Currently, he writes the “Brain Strain” column for Odyssey, is associate editor for the scientific journal Computers and Graphics, and serves on the editorial board for Odyssey, Leonardo, and YLEM.

From the mysterious cult of Pythagoras to the awesome mechanics of Stonehenge to the “gargoyles” and fractals on today’s computers, mathematics has always been a powerful, even divine force in the world. In a lively, intelligent synthesis of math, mysticism, and science fiction, Clifford Pickover explains the eternal magic of numbers. Taking a uniquely humorous approach, he appoints readers “Chief Historian” of an intergalactic museum and sends them, along with a quirky cast of characters, hurtling through the ages to explore how individuals used numbers for such purposes as predicting the end of the world, finding love, and winning wars.

ISBN: 9781402764004
Published by: Penguin Books India

Madness Explained

In Madness Explained leading clinical psychologist Richard Bentall shatters the modern myths that surround psychosis. This groundbreaking work argues that we cannot define madness as an illness to be cured like any other; that labels such as ''schizophrenia'' and ''manic depression'' are meaningless, based on nineteenth-century classifications; and that experiences such as delusions and hearing voices are in fact exaggerations of the mental foibles to which we are all vulnerable. We need, Bentall argues, a radically new way of thinking about psychiatric problems - one that does not reduce madness to brain chemistry, but understands and accepts it as part of human nature.

Author: Bentall, Richard P
ISBN: 0140275401
Published by: Penguin Books India

Places of Destiny: 50 Places Where History Was Made

Ben Dupre read Classics at Exeter College, Oxford before pursuing a career in reference publishing. He was Children's Reference Publisher at Oxford University Press from 1992 until 2004 and, all told, has more than 20 years' experience of bringing complex and challenging concepts to the widest possible audience in an accessible but authoritative manner. A gifted performer on both harpsichord and viola da gamba, Ben lives in North Oxford with his family.

In Places of Destiny, Ben Dupre offers a rich selection of dramatic historical events and locations: the resistance of Leonidas'' Spartans, an enduring epic of last-ditch heroism, in the face of Xerxes'' Persians at the lonely pass of Thermopylae in 480 BC; the sack of Rome in AD 410 when the Visigothic army under the command of Alaric swarmed into Rome and subjected the Eternal City to three days of looting; the establishing of a settlement of courageous dissenters, harbinger of a great new nation, on Jamestown Island, Virginia, in 1607; the storming of a prison and the birth of modern republican politics in Paris on 14 July 1789; the extinction, senseless and bloody, of an entire generation of Western European manhood on the shattered plains of the Somme Valley in 1916; and the irruption of terror from the skies into a bright Manhattan morning on the most dreadful day of the infant 21st century. As well as retailing the extraordinary stories of the events associated with each site, Places of Destiny also examines how succeeding generations have commemorated and interpreted those events. Richly informative and deeply thought-provoking, and interspersed throughout with informative maps and colour illustrations, Places of Destiny offers an enthralling and often moving sequence of narratives that will appeal to anyone who enjoys top-notch popular historical writing.

ISBN: 9781847248336
Published by: Penguin Book India

The Monochrome Madonna

Kalpana Swaminathan is a surgeon and writer. She is the author of the novel Ambrosia for Afters and a collection of detective stories, Cryptic Death. She has also written six books for children. She shares the pseudonym Kalpish Ratna with Ishrat Syed, and their writings on science, the arts and literature appear in several publications

‘Sitara said, with awful distinctness, “I think I’m going to die.”
And that’s how I got stuck with the annual corpse.
Half an hour later I stood in an empty flat, alone with a stranger who was very recently, and very violently, dead.’
Rushing to Sitara’s aid, Lalli’s niece Sita is distracted by Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. Why is it monochrome? And what does it have to do with the body on the living-room floor?

Such questions are hardly relevant to the police in their hunt for the murderer. But Lalli is a detective who revels in curiosities, and she thinks otherwise.

A brisk thriller of deceit and intrigue, The Monochrome Madonna has Lalli at her most astute as she interprets the nuances of a murder without motive.

ISBN: 9780143104186
Published by: Penguin Books India

Chef: A Novel

Jaspreet Singh grew up in India, and now lives in Canada. He is a former research scientist with a PhD in chemical engineering from McGill University, Montreal. His debut short-story collection, Seventeen Tomatoes, won the 2004 McAuslan First Book Prize. Chef, his first novel, won the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction, was longlisted for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and was shortlisted for four awards including the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book.

Kirpal Singh—Kip to his friends—is returning to Kashmir after nearly fourteen years, where he once served as a military chef. Haunted by his past, he reminisces about his life in General Kumar’s camp, nestled in the shadow of the Siachen Glacier. It was there that he first encountered his fiery and anarchic mentor Chef Kishen, under whose supervision he was guided towards the heady spheres of women and food.

Amidst the turmoil that ravaged the Valley and the thwarted sexual yearnings that filled his days, Kip learned to prepare a host of delectable dishes—from rogan josh to tiramisu. Months passed, and though a Sikh, Kip felt secure in his allegiance to India, the right side of the interminable conflict. But one day, a Pakistani ‘terrorist’ with long, flowing hair was swept up on the banks of the river, and everything changed.

Shuttling between the present and the past, Chef exults in culinary delights even as it paints a moving portrait of war-scarred Kashmir.

ISBN: 9780670084326
Published by: Penguin Books India

Leela: A Patchwork Life

As the daughter of the Indian scientist Dr Ramaiah Naidu and a French journalist mother, Leela Naidu grew up in a world full of interesting people and events. Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anuradha launched her film career that included Shyam Benegal’s Trikaal. Leela also made her own shorts and documentaries. In the early 1980s, she was a communications manager, and later editor of Society and managing editor of Keynote. Leela’s story was completed shortly before her untimely death in August 2009.

Jerry Pinto is a poet and journalist based in Mumbai. His published works include Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb (2006) which won the Best Book on Cinema Award at the 54th National Film Awards, Surviving Women (2000) and a collection of poetry, Asylum (2004). He has also co-edited Bombay, Meri Jaan: Writings on Mumbai with Naresh Fernandes and Confronting Love: Poems with Arundhathi Subramaniam.

Leela Naidu was listed as one of the five most beautiful women in the world by Vogue magazine. But she was much more than that. She was the fine-boned, haunting face in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anuradha, in Merchant-Ivory’s The Householder and in Shyam Benegal’s Trikaal. She was the woman who refused to sign Raj Kapoor’s films four times, and the actor who asked for a script long before the phrase ‘bound script’ became Bollywood cliché. Jean Renoir taught her acting and Salvador Dali used her as a model for a Madonna.

Leela was married, the mother of twins and divorced before she was twenty. Later, she was Dom Moraes’s muse, his unpaid secretary, his best friend and, when he was interviewing Indira Gandhi, his translator (interpreting ‘his mumbling questions’). Through this time she also edited magazines and dubbed Hong Kong action movies, was Kumar Shahani’s first producer, and when JRD Tata wanted a film on how to use the washroom on a plane, she made it for him.

A Patchwork Life is a memoir that is charming, idiosyncratic and a window to a world of Chopin, red elephants, lampshades made of human skin, moss gardens and much more: a world where a naked Russian count turns up in a French garden, plush hotels offer porcupine quills as toothpicks and an assistant director sends his female lead an inflatable rubber bra.

Leela’s life was about ‘staying in the moment’. Everyone who met her has a Leela Naidu story. This is her version.

ISBN: 9780670999118
Published by: Penguin Books India

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: The Sadhaka of Dakshineswar

Amiya P. Sen is currently with the Department of History and Culture, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He is the author of several books, including The Indispensable Vivekanada: An Anthology for Our Times and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay: An Intellectual Biography.

While Ramakrishna Paramhamsa has been the subject of innumerable volumes devoted to his life and teachings over the past century and a half, Ramakrishna Paramhamsa: The Sadhaka of Dakshineswar illuminates this enigmatic religious figure and stands out amidst the multitude of voices that crowd his story. It traces the several contradictions of nineteenth-century Bengal that the man embodied: between his Vaishnav roots and Sakti worship; between bhakti and gyan; and between a guru and sadhaka (spiritual practitioner).

Amiya P. Sen situates Sri Ramakrishna within the emerging social and cultural anxieties of the time as also the larger Hindu-Brahminical world that he was born into. This book also carries a brief but critical introduction to the moral and philosophical underpinnings of Ramakrishna’s vibrant theology that will be of interest to lay readers as well as those especially interested in the cultural and religious history of modern Bengal.

ISBN: 9780670082254
Published by: Penguin Books India

Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity

Pavan K. Varma, bestselling author of The Great Indian Middle Class, Being Indian and Ghalib, is with the Indian Foreign Service.

‘Those who have never been colonized can never really know what it does to the psyche of a people. Those who have been are often not fully aware of—or are unwilling to accept—the degree to which they have been compromised.’

Till just a few decades ago, much of the world was carved into empires. By the mid twentieth century independent countries had emerged from these, but even after years of political liberation, cultural freedom has eluded formerly colonized nations like India. In this important book, Pavan Varma, best-selling author of the seminal works The Great Indian Middle Class and Being Indian, looks at the consequences of Empire on the Indian psyche.

Drawing upon modern Indian history, contemporary events and personal experience, he examines how and why the legacies of colonialism persist in our everyday life, affecting our language, politics, creative expression and self-image. Over six decades after Independence, English remains the most powerful language in India, and has become a means of social and economic exclusion. Our classical arts and literature continue to be neglected, and our popular culture is mindlessly imitative of western trends. Our cities are dotted with incongruous buildings that owe nothing to indigenous traditions of architecture. For all our bravado as an emerging superpower, we remain unnaturally sensitive to both criticism and praise from the Anglo-Saxon world and hunger for its approval. And outside North Block, the headquarters of free India’s Ministry of Home Affairs, a visitor can still read these lines inscribed by the colonial rulers: ‘Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty. It is a blessing which must be earned before it can be enjoyed.’

With passion, insight and impeccable logic, Pavan Varma shows why India, and other formerly subject nations, can never truly be free—and certainly not in any position to assume global leadership—unless they reclaim their cultural identity. It is a project, the book argues, that is more urgent than ever before, for in the age of globalization the pressures of homogenization and co-option by the dominant cultures of the west will only increase.

ISBN: 9780670083466
Published by: Penguin Books India

Andy Grove: Intel, Leadership, Life

‘Andy defines leadership in the modern age and Tedlow captures it perfectly’—Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google Inc.

Andy Grove is the best role model we have for doing business in the twenty-first century. The most consistent and important theme of Grove’s life is how he responds to change: boldly, quickly and with every scrap of his intelligence but no respect for conventional wisdom.

The chairman and CEO of Intel in its years of explosive growth, Andy Grove is one of the world’s most admired business people. During his career, Intel became the model for Silicon Valley; Silicon Valley became the model for the world; and Grove became Time’s Man of the Year— an icon of the promise of American life.

This definitive biography, by a Harvard Business School professor with unprecedented access, is not just a gripping life story. It is also a fascinating insight into who Andy Grove really is, how his mind works, how he attacks impossible problems and how he leads others to exceed their own expectations.

After extensive and meticulous research, Richard S. Tedlow has produced the most complete picture ever of this fascinating, colourful, often brilliant but sometimes maddening genius. This is a must-read for anyone who cares about technology or leadership.

‘This book transcends the ‘learn from the successful CEO’ genre just as Intel’s performance under Grove transcended the normal corporate landscape’

—Robert J. Dolan, Dean, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

‘Andy recognized the future and helped make it happen. I have benefited from his insight and skills over the years as have millions of consumers throughout the world’

—Michael Dell, Chairman, Dell Inc.

ISBN: 9780143066002
Author: Richard S. Tedlow
Published by: Penguin Books India

Amen: The Autobiography of a Nun

Born in 1956 in Thrissur, Kerala, Meamy Raphael, later Sister Jesme, was the fourth child of her parents. She completed her school and college education in Thrissur and Palakkad. In June 1974, she started her religious training, but with special sanction, was permitted to continue higher studies for M. Phil and Ph.D on a government merit scholarship. Since 1980, she has been teaching, by turns, at two Catholic colleges in Thrissur; she was vice-principal at one and principal at the other, for three years respectively. Jesme left the Congregation of Mother of Carmel in August 2008, while applying for voluntary retirement as principal.

On 31 August 2008, Sister Jesme left the Congregation of Mother of Carmel. The authorities repeated attempts to have her declared insane, she says, left her no other option. This book, a first of its kind in India, is an outpouring of her experiences as a nun for thirty-three years.

Spirited and fun-loving, from a good family, deeply-rooted in Catholicism, Jesme was drawn to religious life at seventeen after a Retreat at junior college. As a nun, seven years later, she felt distressed at the many ills growing inside the convent and being forced to remain silent about them. There was corruption, by way of donations for college seats; sexual relations between some priests and nuns, and between nuns; class distinctions whereby the cheduthies, or poorer and less-educated sisters, did menial jobs; and a wide gap between comforts and facilities enjoyed by the priests and nuns.

Jesme was permitted to complete her doctorate in English Literature, to pursue her passion for literature, cinema and teaching college students. She exposed them to classic films, believing that aesthetics enhances spirituality. But these joys were clouded by the troubles she faced.

Searing, sincere, and sensitive, Amen is a plea for a reformation of the Church and comes at a time of its growing concern about nuns and priests. It affirms Jesme’s unbroken spirit and faith in Jesus and the Church, living like a nun, but outside the Four Walls of the convent.

ISBN: 9780143067085
Published by: Penguin Book India

Big Ideas

Alex Hutchinson is the award-winning author of the Popular Mechanics series “Know Your Footprint: Energy, Water and Waste” and a contributing editor at the magazine. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Oxford University, and did post-doctoral research in nanoelectromechanics at a National Security Agency lab outside Washington, D.C.

From the polio vaccine to the Post-It, the personal computer to Prozac, these are the scientific and technological innovations that have transformed our world. Award-winning author Alex Hutchinson unveils the 100 greatest inventions of the modern era—starting with the discovery of the transistor in 1947—complete with original photographs and anecdotes about their creation. For example, a candy bar melting in a scientist’s pocket during an experiment led to the invention of the microwave oven.

Hutchinson consulted 25 experts at 17 museums and universities; their collective expertise spans aeronautics, automobiles, biology, computers, medicine, physics, and a host of other fields. The result includes some well-known breakthroughs (the laser, in-vitro fertilization) as well as a host of surprises (waffle-sole running shoes, the pull-top can). This charming book will delight, fascinate, and educate.

ISBN: 9781588167224
Published by: Penguin Books India

All That You Can`t Leave Behind: Why We Can Never Do Without Cricket

Soumya Bhattacharya’s first book, You Must Like Cricket? was published to acclaim across the world in 2006. He is also the author of the novel If I Could Tell You. His writings have appeared in the New York Times in the US; the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age (Melbourne) in Australia; and the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent, the New Statesman and Wisden in the UK. He is the Editor of the Hindustan Times’s Mumbai edition. He lives with his wife and daughter in Mumbai.

If one were to do a nationwide poll of Indians born after Independence and ask which is the one date they remember most, the answer may well be 25 June 1983, the date on which India won the cricket World Cup. It is often said that cricket in India is like a religion; nothing could be more misleading. Religion has scarred the nation more deeply than anything else. Cricket is the balm that heals.

In our collective consciousness, there is nothing quite like cricket. As the most visible expression of national identity, as an obsession or a dream, cricket is the only thing that possibly unites a country as diverse and as contradiction-ridden as India.

In this brilliant book, Soumya Bhattacharya shows how we have made this game our own, given it our own colour, our own customs, our own codes. And how cricket in turn has come to permeate every aspect of our public life, from popular culture to politics—so that, when a game is on, the rest of life happens strictly between overs.

In the end, All That You Can’t Leave Behind is as much about India as it is about cricket.

ISBN: 9780143066293
Published by: Soumya Bhattacharya

Baba`s Vaani His Sayings and Teachings

Vinny Chitluri was born in Arvankadu (Nilgiris), But educated in Jabalpur (MP). She did her PG in Pediatrics from Kalawati Saren Hospital, Delhi. Then in U.S., passed the board examination and was conferred the 'Diplomat of the American Academy of Pediatrics'.She retired from the medical profession at the age of fifty and came to Shirdi in 1994 and settled there.

Baba''s Vaani is a collection of the sayings and teachings of Baba, that are highlighted in the experiences of the devotees as they interacted with Him. Through direct intervention in their lives, and the use of parables, He led them to spiritual growth. Like the caring parent that He is, He used love and humour to help His devotees understand profound philosophical and spiritual ideas. These ideas were expressed in simple language, and often seen in practice in their ordinary day-to-day experiences, so that devotees were unaware that they were acquiring bodha paddhati. Bodha is instruction, or perception, and paddhati is protocol or steps of a ritual.

ISBN: 8120738591
Published by: Penguin Book India

Bandicoots in the Moonlight

‘I grew up in a place where every student appearing for the school finals was accompanied by four experts who wrote the answers outside before they were smuggled in. Where buying a train ticket was uber uncool because only cowards paid to travel. Where dating a woman was unheard of but mating was commonplace, and where the loss of male virginity often had something to do with goats . . .’

Teenage boy Anirban Roy grows up—not a lot wiser—in a small town in ’70s Bihar where his policeman father is posted to pick up intelligence on the looming Naxalite menace. Ganesh Nagar possesses neither village simplicity nor urban slick but observes a line of ethics that defies codification. It takes time for Anirban to learn to juggle adolescent angst and ping-pong hormones, loyal friends and part-time criminals, a bewildering succession of topsy-turvy lessons in life and lust, yet manage to keep the balls in the air.

There are close encounters with animals, too: Experiments with reptiles; the sighting of bandicoots in full flight, their sleek coats gleaming in the moonlight; the hazards involved in stealing a parrot nestling; the part played by a domestic fowl in curing snakebite and predicting death; and the unusual role of donkeys in satiating adolescent lust.

Rites of passage never got so down and dirty as in journalist Avijit Ghosh’s earthy account of boy-to-manhood in fictional Ganesh Nagar, an introverted district that could exist in India anytime, anywhere

ISBN: 9780143103790
Author: Avijit Ghosh
Published by: Penguin Book India

The Tryst Betrayed: Reflections on Diplomacy and Development

Jagat S. Mehta was born in Udaipur in 1922 into one of the then princely state’s most prominent families. After degrees from Allahabad and Cambridge universities, he joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1947. He was chargé d'affaires in China between 1963-66, launched the foreign ministry’s policy planning division in 1966, was high commissioner in Tanzania between 1970-74, becoming Foreign Secretary in 1976, a post he held till 1979.

During his career he led the ministry’s negotiations on many issues of critical importance including the Sino-Indian boundary question (1960), the financial compensation for Indians expelled from Uganda (1975), the comprehensive normalization of India-Pakistan relations (1976), the Salal Hydel project in Kashmir (1976), securing the withdrawal of the Farakka item from the UN (1976), the Farakka Agreement with Bangladesh (1977), the Separate Trade and Transit Treaties with Nepal (1978) and preventing the militarization of Pakistan after the Saur Revolution in Afghanistan (1978).

He was a Fellow at Harvard between 969-70 and again in 1980-81. He was at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington, DC in 1981-82 and was the Tom Slick Professor for World Peace at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin, from 1983-1985. He later held the post of visiting professor at the university from 1986-1995.

Former Indian Foreign Secretary Jagat Singh Mehta looks back on an eventful career which began on the day after India’s independence. His life started in feudalism but tough boarding schools emancipated him.

The Tryst Betrayed gives an insider’s view of policy making. In his lucid and informative style Mehta sheds light on Jawaharlal Nehru’s prophetic assertion of ideological agnosticism (named ‘Non-alignment’ in 1946) and its distortion by the accidental overlap of decolonization with the Cold War. Partition, decades of tensions, four wars and underdevelopment have been the consequences.

In marked departure from other memoirs, Mehta pulls no punches. He argues that Nehru was naïve on China, wishful on the Soviet Union and prejudiced on America. The civil servants were hypnotized by what he refers to as the ‘Panditji knows best’ syndrome. Mehta illustrates that Nehru’s bark was no doubt frightening but his bite not vicious. Mehta’s career is marked by his innovative approach to all his several diplomatic assignments—and though not in office, he forewarned against unprincipled attitudes on Afghanistan.

After retirement Mehta chose academia and voluntarism—at Harvard, the Woodrow Wilson Centre for scholars and he was for fifteen years a visiting professor at the University of Texas in Austin. He remains engaged with the voluntary sector through the Udaipur-based Seva Mandir (working for development in 600 villages), Vidya Bhawan (sixteen educational institutes) and the Jheel Sanrakshan Samiti (for the protection of Udaipur’s lakes). The book gives a fascinating insight into the workings of the NGO sector and the critical importance of the actions of unselfish voluntary effort to ensuring a just democracy.

ISBN: 9780670082469
Published by: Penguin Books India

Ram Jethmalani: The Authorized Biography

Brilliant, flamboyant and controversial—lawyer–politician Ram Jethmalani is all this and much more. His defence of the smuggler Haji Mastan first earned him the sobriquet ‘smugglers’ lawyer’; his defence of Kehar Singh in the Indira Gandhi assassination case made front page news; his political choices, including his bid for the office of the President, earned him praise as well as derision; and the investigative zeal he exhibited in the Bofors case ensured that the issue stayed alive in public memory.

In this authorized biography, Nalini Gera attempts to capture the essential Jethmalani—the deeply private, philosophical and spiritual man behind the public persona. The book dwells on his idyllic childhood in Shikarpur in undivided Sind, the difficult post-Partition days, his enviable legal career, his relationship with the Gandhis and, yes, the women in his life.

Gera’s narrative is enriched by her personal acquaintance and interviews with Jethmalani, who opens up with a candour that is almost unknown among people in public life. Meticulously researched and illuminated by moments of rare insight, this is a book that explores the mind and career of India’s most famous political maverick and, in the process, throws light on the major political and legal events that shaped post-Independence India.

ISBN: 9780143068518
Author: Nalini Gera
Published by: Penguin Books India

Original Price(PB)	:	Rs. 450.00
Special Sale Price of(PB)	:	Rs. 405.00

Anna: The Life and Times of C.N. Annadurai

R. Kannan was born in Madras in 1962. A graduate of New College, Madras Law College and the University of Georgia, he has a doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He practised law in Madras, and briefly also taught law at Madras Law College and international organizations at the University of Madras, where he was a guest faculty member. He has served in various capacities with the United Nations, including as head of Civil Affairs in Cyprus. Currently, he is a political officer with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. Kannan is married and has two children.

On 6 March 1967, fifty-eight-year-old Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai became chief minister of Madras state, when his party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), swept to power for the first time. Marking the pinnacle of his public life, it reflected his popularity among ordinary people who revered him as Anna, or elder brother. This rich biography illuminates his many lives—as a charismatic leader of modern India, as a stalwart of the Dravidian movement, as the founder of the DMK, as spokesman for the South—besides documenting his abilities as an acclaimed orator and littérateur in Tamil and English, and as a stage actor.


Born into a weaving caste family in Kanchipuram, Anna was exposed to the non-Brahmin politics of the Justice Party during his college years and this interest led him to become a protégé of the radical thinker Periyar E.V. Ramasamy in 1935. Anna promoted his mentor’s ideas of Self-Respect and Tamil identity but not his atheism. Like him, he attacked Brahminism and ‘Aryan’ values as the cause of Tamil political and cultural decadence and opposed the imposition of Hindi as the official language. In 1962 Anna took his independent Dravida Nadu demand to the Rajya Sabha, threatening the nation’s unity. Importantly, he used public speaking, journalism, theatre, cinema and agit-prop to broaden the base of the party, which drew renowned film actors into its fold, a bond that endures to this day.

The book does not shy away from the controversies that surrounded the Dravidian movement and candidly examines Anna’s complex relationship with Periyar. It records Anna’s move to form the DMK in 1949, his split with Sampath in 1961 over the party’s strategy and course, and his disillusionment with the corruption and power politics he witnessed as chief minister.

Kannan draws on Anna’s considerable body of writing, the memoirs of other leaders and authors in Tamil, including critics like the poet Kannadasan, Jayakanthan and P. Ramamurti, apart from secondary sources. Featuring luminaries like Rajagopalachari and Kamaraj, Kalaignar Karunanidhi and MGR, among many others, Anna offers a warm and rounded portrait of a man who showed the way for the democratic expression of regional aspirations within a united India.

ISBN: 9780670083282
Published by: Penguin Books India

Original Price(HB)	:	Rs. 550.00
Special Sale Price of(HB)	:	Rs. 495.00

A Better India, A Better World

N.R. Narayana Murthy is the Founder-Chairman of Infosys Technologies Limited, a global software consulting company headquartered in Bangalore, India. He serves on the boards of Unilever, HSBC, NDTV, Ford Foundation and the UN Foundation. He also serves on the boards of Cornell University, Wharton School, Singapore Management University, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore and INSEAD.

The Economist ranked Narayana Murthy among the ten most admired business leaders in 2005. He topped the Economic Times list of India’s most powerful CEOs for three consecutive years: 2004 to 2006. He has been awarded the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India, the Légion d’honneur by the Government of France, and the CBE by the British government. He is the first Indian winner of Ernst and Young’s World Entrepreneur of the Year award and the Max Schmidheiny Liberty prize, and has appeared in the rankings of businessmen and innovators published by India Today, Business Standard, Time, CNN, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes and Financial Times.

With one of the highest GDP growth rates in the world and an array of recent achievements in technology, industry and entrepreneurship, India strides confidently towards the future. But, in the world’s largest democracy, not everyone is equally fortunate. More than 300 million Indians are still prey to hunger, illiteracy and disease, and 51 per cent of India’s children are still undernourished.

What will it take for India to bridge this great divide? When will the fruits of development reach the poorest of the poor, and wipe the tears from the eyes of every man, woman and child, as Mahatma Gandhi had dreamt? And how should this, our greatest challenge ever, be negotiated?

In this extraordinarily inspiring and visionary book, N.R. Narayana Murthy, who pioneered, designed and executed the Global Delivery Model that has become the cornerstone of India’s success in information technology services outsourcing, shows us that a society working for the greatest welfare of the greatest number—samasta jananam sukhino bhavantu—must focus on two simple things: values and good leadership. Drawing on the remarkable Infosys story and the lessons learnt from the two decades of post-reform India, Narayana Murthy lays down the ground rules that must be followed if future generations are to inherit a truly progressive nation.

Built on Narayana Murthy’s lectures delivered around the world, A Better India: A Better World is a manifesto for the youth, the architects of the future, and a compelling argument for why a better India holds the key to a better world.

ISBN: 9780670082834
Published by: Penguin Book India

18 Management Competencies Business Professionals Cannot Ignore!

The uniqueness of this book lies in its simplicity in defining the basic nature of a competency. A brief introduction of the origin and initial development, of this much debated but elusive concept has been provided for easy understanding. The book provides valuable insights into the core of HR issues and an understanding of the new challenges being faced by HR professionals in a rapidly changing business environment. The authors have tried to identify specific competencies without which business results are not possible and what these mean in real terms at different levels of management. The illustrations encapsulate or comment on a competency through humorous depiction of simple real-life situations. The micro case studies attempt to show how successful people have demonstrated a specific competency in real-life business situation. These are anecdotal case studies and do not imply that a particular business leader stands for a specific competency. This work does not pretend to be the last word on competencies, but it can be useful as an invaluable reference guide, ready reckoned or a HR handbook for the practitioners at various levels, including senior managers, heads of HR divisions and even CEOs and others who are involved with HR issues on a day-to-day basis. Students of management who need to be strong in the basics of competencies would also find it useful.

ISBN: 8120739246
Author: Saugata Mitra & Seema Bangia
Published by: Penguin Book India

Why I Supported the Emergency: Essays and Profiles

The Emergency has become a synonym for obscenity. Even men and women who were pillars of Emergency rule and misused their positions to harass innocent people against whom they had personal grudges try to distance themselves from their past in the hope that it will fade out of public memory forever. We must not allow them to get away with it,’ says Khushwant Singh, while fearlessly stating his own reasons for championing the Emergency. This bold and thought-provoking collection includes essays on Indira Gandhi’s government, the Nanavati Commission’s report on the 1984 riots and the riots themselves, as well as captivating pieces on the art of kissing and the importance of bathing. Alongside these are portraits of historical figures such as Bahadur Shah Zafar, General Dyer, Ghalib and Maharaja Ranjit Singh as well as candid profiles of the famous personalities he has known over the years, revealing intimate details about their lives and characters. From his reflections on Amrita Sher-Gil’s alleged promiscuity to the experience of watching a pornographic film with a stoic R.K. Narayan, this is Khushwant Singh at his controversial and iconoclastic best.

Selected and edited by Sheela Reddy, Why I Supported the Emergency: Essays and Profiles covers three quarters of a century. Straight from the heart, this is unadulterated Khushwant Singh.

ISBN: 9780670083244
Author: Khushwant Singh
Published by: Penguin Books India

Original Price(PB)	:	Rs. 450.00
Special Sale Price of(PB)	:	Rs. 405.00

The Complete Yes Prime Minister

Author: Lynn, Jonathan, Jay, Antony
ISBN: 0143029258
Published by: Penguin Books

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: The Sadhaka of Dakshineswar

Amiya P. Sen is currently with the Department of History and Culture, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He is the author of several books, including The Indispensable Vivekanada: An Anthology for Our Times and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay: An Intellectual Biography.

While Ramakrishna Paramhamsa has been the subject of innumerable volumes devoted to his life and teachings over the past century and a half, Ramakrishna Paramhamsa: The Sadhaka of Dakshineswar illuminates this enigmatic religious figure and stands out amidst the multitude of voices that crowd his story. It traces the several contradictions of nineteenth-century Bengal that the man embodied: between his Vaishnav roots and Sakti worship; between bhakti and gyan; and between a guru and sadhaka (spiritual practitioner).

Amiya P. Sen situates Sri Ramakrishna within the emerging social and cultural anxieties of the time as also the larger Hindu-Brahminical world that he was born into. This book also carries a brief but critical introduction to the moral and philosophical underpinnings of Ramakrishna’s vibrant theology that will be of interest to lay readers as well as those especially interested in the cultural and religious history of modern Bengal.

ISBN: 9780670082254
Published by: Penguin Books India

Original Price(HB)	:	Rs. 325.00
Special Sale Price of(HB)	:	Rs. 292.00

Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of a short story collection, Pilgrims (a finalist for the Pen/Hemmingway Award) and a book of non fiction, The Last American Man (nominated for the National Book Award and a New York Times Notable Book for 2002). She is a writer-at-large for American GQ where she has received two National Magazine Award nominations for feature writing. Her most recent book, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India & Indonesia is an international bestseller. Elizabeth Gilbert lives in New Jersey. The audio edition, published in November 2008, is read by the author.

The Last American Man, published by Bloomsbury in January 2009, and rereleased in paperback in August 2009, is an unforgettable adventure story of an irrepressible life lived to the extreme. Stern Men, re-issued by Bloomsbury in March 2009, is her debut novel and Pilgrims, also re-issued in March 2009, is a collection of short stories of memorable individuals pursuing their own American pilgrimage

The eagerly awaited sequel to the astonishing international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love

At the end of her bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe – a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who’d been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. (Both survivors of difficult divorces. Enough said.) But providence intervened one day in the form of the U.S. government, who – after unexpectedly detaining Felipe at an American border crossing – gave the couple a choice: they could either get married, or Felipe would never be allowed to enter the country again.

Having been effectively sentenced to wed, Gilbert tackled her fears of marriage by delving completely into this topic, trying with all her might to discover (through historical research, interviews and much personal reflection) what this stubbornly enduring old institution actually is. The result is Committed – a witty and intelligent contemplation of marriage that debunks myths, unthreads fears and suggests that sometimes even the most romantic of souls must trade in her amorous fantasies for the humbling responsibility of adulthood. Gilbert’s memoir – destined to become a cherished handbook for any thinking person hovering on the verge of marriage – is ultimately a clear-eyed celebration of love, with all the complexity and consequence that real love, in the real world, actually entails.

ISBN: 9781408805763
published by: Penguin Books India