Lucknow Boy: A Memoir


Vinod Mehta - 2011
     The book contains several interesting accounts, starting from incidents in his younger days to his interactions with celebrities from different spheres like business, politics, the entertainment industry and the media. It has several interesting anecdotes and crisp word sketches of celebrities like Shobha De, Sonia Gandhi and Salman Rushdie.The story starts in the city of Lucknow, where Mehta grew up with his family members, who were refugees from Pakistan. The book provides an interesting account of his time in Britain, when Mehta’s journalistic interests were fueled by English newspapers like The New Statesman, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.It then charts his return to Bombay, and his stint as the editor of Debonair, an Indian version of Playboy. Mehta also explains his early efforts in establishing The Sunday Observer and Outlook, while slowly turning into one of the most influential personalities in journalistic circles.Thanks to his decades of experience in the journalistic field, his autobiography holds a treasure chest of interesting instances that add spice to the book. He also shares his valuable insights and experience, providing tips for aspiring editors and journalists.About Vinod MehtaVinod Mehta is best known for being the Editor-in-chief of Outlook Magazine, a position that he maintained till the end of January 2012. He now serves as an advisor to the publication.Mehta has written some other books, and they include:Meena KumariMr Editor, How Close Are You to The PM?Bombay: A Private ViewThe Sanjay StoryVinod Mehta’s style of writing is informal and very direct, true to his journalistic roots. In this book, his style is anecdotal and irreverent.Vinod Mehta’s wife, Sumita Paul, is also a journalist. She has worked for The Sunday Times and The Pioneer.

The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan


Namita Devidayal - 2018
    He broke hearts and he broke rules. He tinkered as furiously with his car as he did with his instrument, which he transformed technically to create the new sitar standard. And always there was the music, at the centre of his being, protected and unharmed—music that contained the sound of ‘fairies dancing, elephants walking’. Vilayat Khan saw music. He was the man who made the sitar sing. .Namita Devidayal, author of the acclaimed bestseller, The Music Room, recreates the extraordinary life of an artiste who fundamentally and forever changed Indian instrumental music. She follows his footsteps from Calcutta, through Delhi, Bombay, Shimla and Dehradun, to Princeton, USA, where he spent his last years. Filled with previously untold stories about the man and the musician, this is an intimate portrait of an uncommon genius. .It is also an absolute feat of research—and storytelling. .‘Vilayat Khan and Ravi Shankar promised each other they would never perform together after this. Kishan Maharaj later told someone, ‘If these two eyes of India play together again, one will shut for ever.’ i

Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan


H.G. Keene - 1876
    Neither of those works, however, undertakes to give a detailed account of the great Anarchy that marked the conclusion of the eighteenth century, the dark time that came before the dawn of British power in the land of the Moghul.

Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink


Elvis Costello - 2015
    Costello went into the family business and had taken the popular music world by storm before he was twenty-four.Costello continues to add to one of the most intriguing and extensive songbooks of the day. His performances have taken him from a cardboard guitar in his front room to fronting a rock and roll band on your television screen and performing in the world's greatest concert halls in a wild variety of company. Unfaithful Music describes how Costello's career has somehow endured for almost four decades through a combination of dumb luck and animal cunning, even managing the occasional absurd episode of pop stardom.This memoir, written with the same inimitable touch as his lyrics, and including dozens of images from his personal archive, offers his unique view of his unlikely and sometimes comical rise to international success, with diversions through the previously undocumented emotional foundations of some of his best known songs and the hits of tomorrow. The book contains many stories and observations about his renowned co-writers and co-conspirators, though Costello also pauses along the way for considerations on the less appealing side of infamy.Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink is destined to be a classic, idiosyncratic memoir of a singular man.

I'm In the Band: Backstage Notes from the Chick in White Zombie


Sean Yseult - 2010
    The band became a multiplatinum, two-time Grammy nominee with the release of their 1992 album, La Sexorcisto. But while most people will remember their bizarre look and macabre lyrics, what many failed to realize was that their lanky, high-octane bass player was a woman.I’m In the Band combines eleven years of tour diaries, flyers, and personal photos and ephemera to chart White Zombie’s rise from the gritty music scene of New York’s Lower East Side in the eighties to arena headliners during the nineties. It also shares the unlikely story of a female musician who won the respect and adoration of male metal musicians and fans. From 1985 to 1996, Sean Yseult was the sole woman not only in White Zombie, but in the entire metal scene.With I’m In the Band, Yseult has created both a coffee table book and a striking visual memoir. Her personal memorabilia offers fans a unique vantage on the life of a mega-band during rock’s last golden age.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid


Douglas R. Hofstadter - 1979
    However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.

Congress-Mukt Bharat


Amit Bagaria - 2021
    For the first 92 years, the 135-year-old party was headed by a Nehru-Gandhi family member for only 11 years, even though Nehru and Indira were collectively the PM of India for 28 years. Then things changed. Indira was the party president for seven consecutive years, and succeeded by her son Rajiv Gandhi for six years. After Rajiv’s assassination in 1991, PV Narasimha Rao was party president for five years. Sitaram Kesri was the next Congress president for 18 months. Enter Sonia Gandhi. Barring a 20-month period when her son Rahul held the post, she has been Congress president for 23 years. During her ‘reign’, the party has seen an average 31.6% decline in vote share and a 50.2% reduction in seats in the Lok Sabha. Due to her not allowing a proper election for the post of party president — as was the norm for the first 92 years — the Congress is collapsing. Ever since the Modi-led NDA routed the party in 2014, several Congressmen have been complaining about “lack of effective leadership.” Narendra Modi. Whether you admire him or belittle him, adore him or chastise him, praise him or ridicule him, love him or hate him, no Indian can pretend to ignore the man. Since September 2013, he has been the biggest newsmaker in India . On 15th August 2020, Modi became the longest-serving non-Congress PM of India. The first three chapters of this easy-to-read book are about Congress party’s corruption. The next three analyse the 2019 elections in great detail. Then, there is a chapter about the Left Front and one on the Congress’ performance in each state since Sonia became the chief. The next eight chapters are about Modi, his successes, his failures, and the work he has done in 80 months. The longest chapter, divided into 14 sections, details the successes and failures of India’s 14 prime ministers. “Is Congress Becoming Anti-India” and “Congress-Mukt Bharat” are the final two chapters. The Appendix lays out ‘Agenda 2024’ for India.

The Rich: From Slaves to Super Yachts: A 2000-Year History


John Kampfner - 2014
    Starting with the Romans and Ancient Egypt and culminating with the oligarchies of modern Russia and China, it compares and contrasts the rich and powerful down the ages and around the world. What unites them? Have the same instincts of entrepreneurship, ambition, vanity, greed and philanthropy applied throughout? As contemporary politicians, economists and the public wrestle with the inequities of our time - the parallel world inhabited by the ultra-wealthy at a time of broader hardship - it is salutary to look to history for explanations. This book synthesises thousands of years of human behaviour and asks the question: is the development of the globalised super-rich over the past twenty years anything new?

Indian Art and Culture


Nitin Singhania - 2015
    A wide ranged knowledge base of the Indian, Art, paintings, music and architecture has been presented with the help of several pictures and diagrams which will arouse the readers interest. There are questions at the end of each chapter which will help students prepare for the examinations.

Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century


Jenny Minton QuigleyLauren Groff - 2021
    More than sixty years later, it is more important than ever to discuss this complex novel. Now, having commissioned original contributions by Cheryl Strayed, Roxane Gay, Erika Sánchez, Sloane Crosley, Andre Dubus III, Ian Frazier, Lauren Groff, Stacy Schiff, Emily Mortimer, Victor LaValle, and many more, Jenny Minton Quigley examines how we read Lolita today.Lolita both exists in and exemplifies many of the issues at the forefront of our current national discourse: art and politics, race and whiteness, gender and power, sexual trauma. Jenny, the daughter of Walter J. Minton, who published Lolita at G. P. Putnam's Sons after it had been rejected by five other American publishers, brings a unique vantage point to this conversation. In her introduction she tells the amazing true story of the original publication, a risk Walter took despite the very real possibility that he could be prosecuted and go to jail (and which, by the way, included Walter's daring flight through a storm to meet Nabokov and strike the deal).Lolita in the Afterlife is a riveting examination of the bright and dark spell that Nabokov's indelible novel left and still leaves on the cultural landscape. As these prominent writers of the twenty-first century attest, Lolita lives on, in an afterlife as blinding as a supernova.

The Kennedy Conspiracy: 12 Startling Revelations About the JFK Assassination


Bill Sloan - 2012
    Author Bill Sloan, award-winning journalist and co-author of JFK: THE LAST DISSENTING WITNESS, was working at the City Desk of the DALLAS TIMES HERALD just four blocks away when the fatal shots were fired. He helped cover the fast-moving sequence of events that followed, and later interviewed many of the people involved. Accounts in THE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY include those of Ed Hoffman, who saw the man who shot the president (and it wasn’t Oswald)—but was unable to communicate it to the authorities because he was deaf and mute; Gary Cornwell, deputy chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, who saw the classified information still withheld from the public, and reveals how the FBI turned the investigation into “a joke, a farce, and a national disgrace”; James Tague, who was wounded by a bullet that the Warren Commission insisted was never fired; and Dr. Joe D. Goldstritch, who was in the Parkland ER when Kennedy’s body was brought in, and who witnessed the surgical procedure that destroyed the neat entry wound in the president’s throat.

The Untold Vajpayee: Politician and Paradox


Ullekh N.P. - 2016
    The Untold Vajpayee : The Life and Times of A Poet Politician by ULLEKH NP , 9780670088782

How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human


Melanie Challenger - 2020
    But we are also an animal that does not think it is an animal. How well do we really know ourselves?How to Be Animal tells a remarkable story of what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our existence is a profound struggle with being animal. We possess a psychology that seeks separation between humanity and the rest of nature, and we have invented grand ideologies to magnify this. As well as piecing together the mystery of how this mindset evolved, Challenger's book examines the wide-reaching ways in which it affects our lives, from our politics to the way we distance ourselves from other species. We travel from the origin of homo sapiens through the agrarian and industrial revolutions, the age of the internet, and on to the futures of AI and human-machine interface. Challenger examines how technology influences our sense of our own animal nature and our relationship with other species with whom we share this fragile planet.That we are separated from our own animality is a delusion, according to Challenger. Blending nature writing, history, and moral philosophy, How to Be Animal is both a fascinating reappraisal of what it means to be human, and a robust defense of what it means to be an animal.

Recording The Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used To Record Their Classic Albums


Kevin Ryan - 2006
    It addresses the technical side of The Beatles' sessions and was written with the assistance of many of the group's former engineers and technicians [1]. The book looks at every piece of recording equipment used at Abbey Road Studios during the Beatles' sessions, including all microphones, outboard gear, mixing consoles, speakers, and tape machines. Each piece is examined in great detail, and the book is illustrated with hundreds of full color photographs, charts, drawings and illustrations. How the equipment was implemented during the group's sessions is also covered. The effects used on the Beatles' records are addressed in great detail, with full explanations of concepts such as ADT and flanging. The Production section of the book looks at the group's recording processes chronologically, starting with their "artist test" in 1962 and progressing through to their final session in 1970. The book contains several rare and unseen photos of the Beatles in the studio. The studio personnel and the studio itself is examined.The authors spent over a decade researching the subject matter and offer up their findings in exhaustive detail. The 540-page hardcover book has been highly praised not only for its massive scope, but also for its presentation. The "Deluxe" version, released in September of 2006, was housed in a replica EMI multi-track tape-box, complete with faux time-worn edges. Rather than a listing of the tape's contents, the back of the box featured the book's contents, hand-written by former Beatles tape-op and engineer, Ken Scott. The book was also accompanied by several "bonus items", including reproductions of never-seen photos of the Beatles. The first printing of 3,000 books sold out in November of 2006, and a second printing was released in February of 2007. The book is currently in its fourth printing.The book has been critically praised by recognized Beatles authority Mark Lewisohn (who also contributed the book's Foreword), The New York Times[2][3], Mojo (magazine) (which gave it 5 stars), Beatles engineers Norman Smith, Ken Scott, and Alan Parsons, Yoko Ono, and many other individuals directly involved with the Beatles' work. The release of the book was celebrated in November 2006 with a party in Studio Two at Abbey Road [4]. In attendance were most of the Beatles' former engineers and technicians.

Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall


Chris Welch - 2001
    The eccentric group who satirised trad jazz, pop and rock, reached Number five with ‘I’m The Urban Spaceman’ in 1968. A punishing schedule of tours and television followed, including work with the future Monty Python team. The following year, broke and burned out, the Bonzos split up, leaving behind a loyal cult following.Vivian launched into myriad solo projects in music, film and theatre, giving himself several nervous breakdowns in the process. His comic masterpiece, ‘Sir Henry at Rawlinson End’, was heard in radio, on an album, and then hit the big screen. Vivian wrote the musical ‘Stinkfoot’, was narrator on ‘Tubular Bells’ and provided lyrics for Steve Winwood. In person, he was just as multi-faceted, by turns the erudite artist and the truculent Teddy Boy, breathtakingly rude. A powerful figure, tall, red-haired and never less than extravagant in his fashion, Vivian Stanshall was a hell-raiser of legendary reputation – ably assisted through much of the 1970s by Who drummer Keith Moon. Vivian drove the many who loved him to the limit, struggling with terrible tranquilliser and alcohol dependency. He died at home in a house fire in 1995. The story of his turbulent life is utterly compelling.