Singh has been a formidable civil servant, an empathetic politician, a keen chronicler of India’s socioeconomic history and the quintessential academic that academia never got. His life’s work, as chronicled in this book has indeed been intertwined with the progress India has made. In many such cases, Singh has been not just an active contributor but has also given shape to those many momentous decisions—whether through the use of diplomacy or the rigours of understanding the mechanism of the levers of power or, for that matter, by consensus building.Portraits of Power is not just an autobiography of a man, who for several decades has played an active role in India’s march towards becoming a formidable economy; it is indeed, on multiple levels, a book that profiles myriad institutions that work in harmony to make things happen. And in everything that N.K. Singh has done, so in this book too, there is both incisive clarity and insightful anecdotal heft.This book helps readers navigate the vast complexities of India but in a way that is stark and yet elegant.From personal happenings to national movements, Portraits of Power covers it all.

    The Indian team is a glorious mix of people from different religions, classes, castes, regions and languages; where the son of a pump manager from Ranchi is tightly bound in fate and determination to the child prodigy of a Marathi professor from Mumbai and a Muslim from the back alleys of Hyderabad. And while dynasts can rule the roost in politics and Bollywood, cricket is a meritocratic space. But it wasn't always this way. Gandhi, for instance, intensely disapproved of cricket. During the Raj it was associated with racism. It had the nasty odour of communal division, with Hindus and Muslims playing in separate teams. Dalits, meanwhile, were personas non grata on the field. Bestselling author and journalist Rajdeep Sardesai narrates the story of post-Independence cricket through the lives of eleven extraordinary Indian cricketers who represent different dimensions of this change - from Dilip Sardesai and Tiger Pataudi in the 1950s to M.S. Dhoni and Virat Kohli today. This is not a book about an all-time best Indian cricket eleven but one that seeks to show us glimpses of a changing India through personal and anecdotal biographical portraits. From the days that Indian cricketers travelled by train and earned a few hundred rupees for Test matches to the bright lights of the multimillion-dollar IPL, this book puts the spotlight on the evolution of Indian cricket and society, and shows how a post-colonial nation found self-respect.

    This is Coyote's country--a landscape of the imagination, where nothing is as it appears.

    There she meets its founder, who once modeled with a pelican on his arm for a Dewar’s Scotch campaign but has since declined into a pit of fraud and madness. He becomes our embezzling protagonist whose tales about the birds he “rescues” never quite add up. Gerard’s personal stories are no less eerie or poignant: An essay that begins as a look at Gerard’s first relationship becomes a heart-wrenching exploration of acquaintance rape and consent. An account of intimate female friendship pivots midway through, morphing into a meditation on jealousy and class.Sunshine State offers a unique look at Florida, a state whose economically and environmentally imperiled culture serves as a lens through which we can examine some of the most pressing issues haunting our nation.BFF --Mother-father God --Going diamond --Records --The mayor of Williams Park --Sunshine state --Rabbit --Before: an inventory

    Less than a decade later, weakened by internecine rivalry and intrigue, Punjab fell into the waiting hands of the British. The ruler who signed away the kingdom and its treasures, including the famed Koh-i-noor diamond, was an eleven-year-old boy, Duleep Singh, the youngest of Ranjit Singh’s acknowledged sons.In this nuanced and poignant novel that draws upon true events, Navtej Sarna tells the unusual story of the last Maharaja of Punjab. Soon after the British had annexed his kingdom, Duleep was separated from his mother and his people, taken under British guardianship and converted to Christianity. At sixteen, he was transported to England to live the life of a country squire—an exile that he had been schooled to seek himself. But disillusionment with the treatment meted out to him and a late realization of his lost legacy turned Duleep into a rebel. He became a Sikh again and sought to return to and lead his people. The attempt was to drag him into the murky politics of nineteenthcentury Europe, and leave him depleted and vulnerable to every kind of deceit and ridicule. His end came in a cheap hotel room in Paris, but not before one last act of betrayal and humiliation.

    and I am wide awake because the man of the house has decided that he needs to perform a series of complex manoeuvres that involve him balancing on his left elbow. When I fell asleep last night, there was a baby lying next to me. Her smelly diaper is still wedged on my head but aside from this rather damp clue, I can't seem to find her anywhere. I could ask my mother-in-law if she has seen the baby, but she may just tell me that I need to fast on alternate Mondays, and God will deliver the baby back to me . . . Full of wit and delicious observations, Mrs Funnybones captures the life of the modern Indian woman—a woman who organizes dinner each evening, even as she goes to work all day, who runs her own life but has to listen to her Mummyji, who worries about her weight and the state of the country. Based on Twinkle Khanna’s super-hit column, Mrs Funnybones marks the debut of one of our funniest, most original voices.

    Gulzar witnessed the horrors of Partition first-hand and it is a theme that he has gone back to again and again in his writings. Footprints on Zero Line brings together a collection of his finest writings - fiction, non-fiction and poems - on the subject. What sets this collection apart from other writings on Partition is that Gulzar's unerring eye does not stop at the events of 1947 but looks at how it continues to affect our lives to this day. Wonderfully rendered in English by well-known author and translator Rakhshanda Jalil, this collection marks seventy years of India's Independence. Footprints on Zero Line is not only a brilliant collection on a cataclysmic event in the history of our nation by one of our finest contemporary writers, it is also a timely reminder that those who forget the errors of the past are doomed to repeat them.

    Laxman profiles ten hilariously idiosyncratic people, who are among the countless men and women who run the lives of the middle class in India. The tales are put together by Ganesh, a freelance journalist trying to write a feature article on servants he has known. As his chronicle progresses, what emerges is a richly embellished narrative starring unforgettable characters. There is Swami, the cook, who finds his true vocation as a godman; Kumar, who deserts his household duties to pursue his tinsel-town dreams; Anthony, the driver, who makes money on the side by giving lifts to strangers; the maid Shanti, whose lift is thrown into turmoil by the neighbour's servant who is besotted with her; and Ramaswami, a trusted retainer who reappears mysteriously, much to the consternation of his employer, long after he has been presumed drowned. Marked by Laxman's trademark wit, and including pencil sketches drawn especially for this edition, Servants of India is a delightful read.

     As she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, finding solace and safety within the woods, and the joyful and rhythmic beating of wings, Oliver intimately shares with her readers her quiet discoveries, boundless curiosity, and exuberance for the grandeur of our world. This radiant collection of her work, with some pieces published here for the first time, reaffirms Oliver as a passionate and prolific observer whose thoughtful meditations on spiders, writing a poem, blue fin tuna, and Ralph Waldo Emerson inspire us all to discover wonder and awe in life's smallest corners.

    In The New York Times Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus proclaimed it "a masterpiece of American fiction" and lauded its illumination, "through the steady radiance of its author's profound moral intelligence, [of] the world we thought we knew."In Farther Away, which gathers together essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years, Franzen returns with renewed vigor to the themes, both human and literary, that have long preoccupied him. Whether recounting his violent encounter with bird poachers in Cyprus, examining his mixed feelings about the suicide of his friend and rival David Foster Wallace, or offering a moving and witty take on the ways that technology has changed how people express their love, these pieces deliver on Franzen's implicit promise to conceal nothing. On a trip to China to see first-hand the environmental devastation there, he doesn't omit mention of his excitement and awe at the pace of China's economic development; the trip becomes a journey out of his own prejudice and moral condemnation. Taken together, these essays trace the progress of unique and mature mind wrestling with itself, with literature, and with some of the most important issues of our day. Farther Away is remarkable, provocative, and necessary.

    The candidness of the author’s voice, the gentle humour of fleeting narrative and the fragility of diary entries, photographs, collages and sketches will make My Daughters’ Mum resonate with every reader.

    last year, this updated collection contains the best of Robertson Davies' newspaper and magazine articles written over the past 50 years. "Each piece is entertaining and enlightening. . . ".--Publishers Weekly.

     From the Aztec plumed serpent to the Christian dove to Plato's vision of the human soul growing wings, religion and philosophy use birds to represent our aspirational selves. Winged creatures appear in mythology and folk tales, and in literature by writers as diverse as Ovid, Thoreau, and T. S. Eliot. They've been omens, allegories, and guides; they've been worshipped, eaten, and feared. Birds figure tellingly in the work of such nature writers as Gilbert White and Peter Matthiessen, and are synonymous with the science of Darwin.Gibson spent years collecting this gorgeously illustrated celebration of centuries of human response to the delights of the feathered tribes. The Bedside Book of Birds is for everyone who is intrigued by the artistic forms that humanity creates to represent its soul.

    Guest editor David Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, has assembled a fresh crop of the people and stories that dominated the sports world in 2006.Michael Lewis gives a behind-the-scenes look at the legendary football coach Bill Parcells. Bob Hohler delves in the murky waters of modern amateur basketball, where teams blatantly dole out cash to players and shoe companies set their sights on prospects as young as twelve. William Rhoden traces the fate of an unknown filly injured on the racetrack. Jeff MacGregor describes the unforgettable Friars Club roast of boxing's provocative promoter Don King. Daniel Coyle follows a forty-year-old Slovene soldier who might be the world’s best ultra-endurance athlete. L. Jon Wertheim tells of a young pro-basketball player who found himself wrestling the shoe bomber Richard Reid to the ground during a transatlantic flight. And Derek Zumsteg provides a hilarious and utterly original in-depth account of the baseball career of Bugs Bunny, “the greatest banned player ever.”These pieces and many more go beyond the spotlight, revealing the people and issues that make sports so relevant and important to all of us.The white coon / Larry Brown --Bugs Bunny, greatest banned player ever / Derek Zumsteg --Ready for some fútbol? / Oscar Casares --The game of the year / Chris Ballard --Filling in the pieces of Jake Scott / Dave Hyde --Fading away / Wright Thompson --Deal of the century / John Klima --An unknown filly dies, and the crowd just shrugs / William C. Rhoden --Let us now raze famous men / Jeff MacGregor --Only medal for Bode is fool's gold / Sally Jenkins --That which does not kill me makes me stranger / Daniel Coyle --Polite when in neutral / Mimi Swartz --Snook / Ian Frazier --Blank Monday / William Finnegan --What keeps Bill Parcells awake at night / Michael Lewis --The madness of John Chaney / Robert Huber --The real deal in so many ways / Michael Wilbon --$neaker war / Bob Hohler --Baseball for life / Sara Corbett --A new game plan / Eli Saslow --The Saturday game / Eric Neel --Playing 4 keeps / Bryan Smith --The ultimate assist / L. Jon Wertheim --In Iraq, soccer field is no longer a refuge / Bruce Wallace --A moment of silence / Steve Friedman --Team Hoyt starts again / John Brant --The big show by little people / Paul Cullum --Talking turkey / Bill Buford

    With illustrations from Archibald Prize winner Ben Quilty.In January 2016 Richard Flanagan and Ben Quilty travelled to Lebanon, Greece, and Serbia to follow the river that is the exodus of our age: that of refugees from Syria.Flanagan's 'notes' and Quilty's sketches bear witness to the remarkable people they met on that journey and their stories. These individual portraits from the Man Booker Prize-winning author and Archibald Prize-winning artist combine to form a powerful testament to human dignity and courage in the face of war, death, and suffering.Refugees are not like you and me. They are you and me. That terrible river of the wretched and the damned flowing through Europe is my family.