Dorchen: A Childhood Lost in War-Torn Germany


Maria Stetler - 2014
    She was an ordinary German schoolgirl from an average family thrust into the extraordinary circumstances of war. Her memoir vividly describes the price she, her family, and all the German people paid for Hitler's ambition. Relived through her memories, it is truly a story of childhood innocence lost, but also of survival through grit and courage. She endured air raids, bomb shelters, military training, capture, imprisonment, rape and harrowing escape. The author has created a razor-sharp, clear-eyed and tense narrative about her life during this frightening time, as well as the story of her early struggles as a German war bride settling into a new life in America. This is Dorchen, and she is a remarkable woman.

Countdown


Amitav Ghosh - 1999
    Countdown is partly a result of conversations with many hundreds of people in India, Pakistan and Nepal and Ghosh concludes, that "the pursuit of nuclear weapons in the subcontinent is the moral equivalent of civil war?"

Food That Really Schmecks


Edna Staebler - 1968
    In the 1960s, Edna Staebler moved in with an Old Order Mennonite family to absorb their oral history and learn about Mennonite culture and cooking. From this fieldwork came the cookbook Food That Really Schmecks. Originally published in 1968, Food That Really Schmecks instantly became a classic, selling tens of thousands of copies. Interspersed with practical and memorable recipes are Staebler's stories and anecdotes about cooking, life with the Mennonites, family, and the Waterloo Region. Described by Edith Fowke as folklore literature, Staebler's cookbooks have earned her national acclaim.Back in print as part of Wilfrid Laurier University Press's Life Writing series, a series devoted celebrating life writing as both genre and critical practice, the updated edition of this groundbreaking book includes a foreword by award-winning author Wayson Choy and a new introduction by well-known food writer Rose Murray.

India's Power Elite: Caste, Class and Cultural Revolution


Sanjaya Baru - 2021
    Its point of departure is the political transition under way in twenty-first-century India, with the marginalization of the Congress Party and the staging of a cultural revolution symbolized by the rise of Hindu majoritarianism. Baru deconstructs the morphology of the Indian power elite-comprising remnants of a feudal gentry, kulaks, a metropolitan business class, the civil services and a cultural elite of opinion-makers. He also examines the role of caste, class and culture in the emergence of a 'New India'. Aimed at the socially engaged reader, this book will interest both students as well as those who wield power.

Lower Deck: Life Aboard a British Destroyer in World War II


John Davies - 1945
    Sikh (due to wartime restrictions, the ship's name in the book is the H.M.S. Skye); the ship is stationed in the eastern Mediterranean in the defense of Malta. Centering on the lives of the crewmen who are part of a gun crew, the book portrays the ship's almost daily encounters with German and Italian ships and planes (as the author states: “...Daylight each morning brings with it almost complete certainty of attack...the comparatively confined waters, the proximity and strategic excellence of Axis air bases, means that to avoid discovery and attack is virtually impossible.”) Eventually, the Skye's luck runs out and on September 14, 1942, she is sunk by German artillery with the loss of 115 men, with more men taken prisoner, and others rescued by nearby friendly ships. Includes a Glossary of naval terms used in the book.

Gunning for the Godman: The True Story Behind Asaram Bapu's Conviction


Ajay Lamba - 2020
    

Democracy's XI: The Great Indian Cricket Story


Rajdeep Sardesai - 2017
    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.

The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the History and Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent from the Coming of the Muslims to the British Conquest 1200-1700 Volume-2.


S.A.A. Rizvi - 1996
    This work, along with A. L. Basham's book, The Wonder That Was India, provides a comprehensive and riveting outlook of the pre-colonial times in the history of India. While the first volume by Basham covers the period between ancient India and the arrival of the Muslims, Rizvi's second volume covers the period between 1200 and 1700 AD.

A Sporting Chance


Titus O'Reily - 2018
    Like ‘fun run’, it often actually means exactly the opposite.Titus O’Reily, the sports historian Australia neither needs nor deserves, examines why our nation’s sportspeople are so readily forgiven for doing terrible things. With ridiculous tales from Australia’s chequered sporting history, A Sporting Chance dissects the scandals big and small, the mistakes made in covering them up and the path athletes tread back to redemption. From the Essendon supplements saga and the sandpaper-loving Australian cricket team to whatever it is Nick Kyrgios has done now, Titus reveals the archetypes at the heart of our greatest sporting scandals. There’s the corrupt cop who gave us the race that stopped a nation and the boxing champion who refused to train. There’s the cashed-up businessmen who bankrupted clubs and the commentators who can’t get their foot out of their mouth. And of course there’s the good blokes, like Wayne Carey, Matthew Johns and Shane Warne, who it seems we’ll forgive for absolutely anything. In his rambling and at times incoherent style, Titus asks the question: are Australians really that forgiving of their sporting heroes? With the rise of social media, women’s sport and the drive towards greater equality, are the good blokes of Australia’s sporting landscape an endangered species?

Worshipping False Gods: Ambedkar And The Facts Which Have Been Erased


Arun Shourie - 1997
    orig. pub. 1997. very controversial

Undaunted: Five True Stories from World War II


J. Pepper Bryars - 2013
    Army, the U.S. Army Air Corps, the U.S. Marines, and the U.S. Merchant Marines.These stories are from both theaters – European and Pacific – and they span the length of the war. First we meet a young artillery officer who devises a plan to keep the Japanese at bay while besieged in the Philippines. Then we walk beside a soldier who loses his leg after the infamous Bataan Death March. Next we leap from a crippled plane with a bombardier in the skies over Nazi-occupied France, then sail with a Merchant Seaman through the U-boat infested waters of the Mediterranean, and finally stand with an awestruck Marine in the middle of downtown Nagasaki.Undaunted adds the tales of these courageous men to the historic record of American bravery and sacrifice during World War II.

Blood Island: An Oral History of the Marichjhapi Massacre


Deep Halder - 2019
    Deep Halder is one of them.' - Amitava Kumar In 1978, around 1.5 lakh Hindu refugees, mostly belonging to the lower castes, settled in Marichjhapi an island in the Sundarbans, in West Bengal. By May 1979, the island was cleared of all refugees by Jyoti Basu's Left Front government. Most of the refugees were sent back to the central India camps they came from, but there were many deaths: of diseases, malnutrition resulting from an economic blockade, as well as from violence unleashed by the police on the orders of the government. Some of the refugees who survived Marichjhapi say the number of those who lost their lives could be as high as 10,000, while the-then government officials maintain that there were less than ten victims. How does an entire island population disappear? How does one unearth the truth and the details of one of the worst atrocities of post-Independent India? Journalist Deep Halder reconstructs the buried history of the 1979 massacres through his interviews with survivors, erstwhile reporters, government officials and activists with a rare combination of courage, conscientiousness and empathy.

Vikram Sarabhai


Amrita Shah - 2007
    Born into a wealthy and politically conscious business family, he had an understanding of the power of money and the problems of a newly independent nation, to which he married a love for physics. This work is the story of this visionary.

Bihar Diaries


Amit Lodha - 2018
    The book follows the adrenaline-fuelled chase that took place across three states during Amit's tenure as superintendent of police of Shekhpura, a sleepy mofussil town in Bihar.How does Amit navigate between his many professional challenges and conquer his demons? What does he do when the ganglord comes after his family? Bihar Diaries captures vividly the battle of nerves between a dreaded outlaw and a young, urbane IPS officer.

Final Flight: The Mystery of a WW II Plane Crash and the Frozen Airmen in the High Sierra


Peter Stekel - 2010
    The “Iceman” discovery creates a media storm which draws author Peter Stekel to investigate and stumble upon the case of a navigation training flight crew missing since 1942. Early attempts at recovery are thwarted due to empty graves, botched records, bad weather, bad luck, and bad timing. Then, in 2007, Stekel himself discovers a second body in the glacier. Through meticulous research, interviews, and his own mountaineering trips to the site, Stekel uncovers the identities of these four young men. Final Flight explores the story of the ill-fated flight and the misinformation surrounding it for over 60 years. The book is a gripping account that’s part mystery, part history, and a personal journey to uncover the truth of the events that occurred on November 18, 1942. In the process, Stekel rewrites the young aviators' last days and takes us on their final flight.