Treasury. And Alva Vanderbilt squandered tens of thousands on one evening to crack the closed social circle of the Mrs. Astor. And when Jay Gould, of Black Friday fame, sent his card to one of the Rothschilds, it was returned with the comment, "Europe is not for sale." It was this climate of mid- and late-nineteenth-century excess that fostered the most rapid period of growth in the history of the United States, replacing the unyielding Puritanism of Cotton Mather with the flexible creed of Henry Ward Beecher. National Book Award nominee Milton Rugoff gives his uniquely revealing view of the Gilded Age in this collective biography of Americans from 1850 to 1890. Writing on the political spoilsmen, money kings, parvenus, forty-niners, lords of the press, sexual transgressors, and women's rights leaders, Rugoff focuses on thirty-six men and women from almost every walk of life. His exponents include U.S. Grant, John Charles Frémont, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jim Fisk, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Horatio Alger, free-love advocate Victoria Woodhull, first female surgeon Bethenia Owens-Adair, Brigham Young's rebellious nineteenth wife Anna Eliza Young, Boston Brahmin Charles Eliot Norton, Gold Rush pioneer Sarah Royce, black visionary Sojourner Truth, and to critique American society, Walt Whitman. In examining the Gilded Age, Milton Rugoff offers fresh glimpses into the lives of the celebrities of the era, as well as some lesser-known Americans, while at the same time revealing the roots of problems that still plague us today.

    His exploits and the people he worked with were truly remarkable. His spying missions saw him walk back and forth 24 times from Peshawar to Kabul eluding capture and certain death. He fooled the Germans so successfully that they gave him £ 2.5 million, in today’s money, and awarded him the Iron Cross. His British spymaster was Peter Fleming, the brother of Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond. Fleming, operating from the gardens of the Viceroy’s House in wartime Delhi, gave him the code name Silver. Talwar became a spy after he helped Subhas Chandra Bose escape India via Kabul. Bose was seeking help from Germany and Japan to free India and never discovered that Talwar was betraying him to the British. Talwar settled in UP after India won independence; he died of natural causes in 1983.Based on research in previously classified files of the Indian, British, Russian and other governments, The Indian Spy tells for the first time the full story of the most extraordinary agent of World War II.

    The McRaes, like so many white people, seemed oblivious to the violent injustices of apartheid. As the author grew up, the political differences between father and son widened and when Don refused to join up for National Service, risking imprisonment or exile overseas, the two were torn apart. It wasn't until years later that the author discovered that the father with whom he had fought so bitterly had later in his life transformed himself into a political hero. Risking everything one dark and rainy night Ian McRae travelled secretly into the black township of Soweto to meet members of Nelson Mandela's then banned African National Congress to discuss ways to bring power to black South Africa. He had no political ambitions; he was just a man trying to replace the worst in himself with something better.Under Our Skin is a memoir of these tumultuous years in South Africa's history, as told through the author's family story. It offers an intimate and penetrating perspective on life under apartheid, and tells a story of courage and fear, hope and desolation and love and pain, especially between a father and his son.

    But for Kastur, the child bride who married the boy next door, Mohandas was a sexually-driven, self-righteous, and overbearing husband.Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was sworn to poverty, celibacy and the cause for India’s freedom; Kastur spent sixty-two years of her life, juggling the roles of a devoted wife, a satyagrahi and sacrificing mother, who was eclipsed because of a man who almost became God for India’s multitude. Gandhi was an intolerant father to Harilal, his wayward son, driven to debauchery; Kasturba paid the price for her son’s unending misery.Kastur is long dead, but she lives on in the pages of her diary…. Renowned author Neelima Dalmia Adhar lays it bare to tell the world what it meant to be Kasturba Gandhi, wife of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi –- in a gripping tale of unconditional love, passion, sex, ecstasy and the ultimate liberation that every woman seeks.

    Based on 114 intriguing interviews with nineteen former chief justices of India and more than sixty-six former judges of the Supreme Court of India, Abhinav Chandrachud opens a window to the life and times of the former judges of India's highest court of law and in the process offers a history that largely remained in oblivion for a long time.

    A hunted, haunted Brahmin youth vows revenge for the gruesome murder of his beloved father. Cold, calculating, cruel and armed with a complete absence of accepted morals, he becomes the most powerful political strategist in Bharat and succeeds in uniting a ragged country against the invasion of the army of that demigod, Alexander the Great. Pitting the weak edges of both forces against each other, he pulls off a wicked and astonishing victory and succeeds in installing Chandragupta on the throne of the mighty Mauryan empire.History knows him as the brilliant strategist Chanakya. Satisfied—and a little bored—by his success as a kingmaker, through the simple summoning of his gifted mind, he recedes into the shadows to write his Arthashastra, the ‘science of wealth’. But history, which exults in repeating itself, revives Chanakya two and a half millennia later, in the avatar of Gangasagar Mishra, a Brahmin teacher in smalltown India who becomes puppeteer to a host of ambitious individuals—including a certain slumchild who grows up into a beautiful and powerful woman.Modern India happens to be just as riven as ancient Bharat by class hatred, corruption and divisive politics and this landscape is Gangasagar’s feasting ground. Can this wily pandit—who preys on greed, venality and sexual deviance—bring about another miracle of a united India? Will Chanakya’s chant work again? Ashwin Sanghi, the bestselling author of The Rozabal Line, brings you yet another historical spinechiller.

    He is undoubtedly one of India's most successful captains, one who moulded a new team when India was at its lowest ebb, reeling from the betting scandal. There can be no argument about his cricketing genius, right from the time he scored a Test century at Lord's to the time he led India to the 2003 World Cup final. But the world of cricketing fans is divided into those who adore him fiercely and despise him greatly. He could be arrogant on occasion: Ganguly allegedly refused to carry the drinks as a twelfth man. He constantly challenged authority. Greg Chappell discarded him from the team during his stint as coach. Ganguly cared little for convention: remember the bare-chested celebration at an Indian win? Yet, in all the years of his roller-coaster ride through Indian cricket, no one questioned the man's utter devotion to the game or his team. In this account of one of India's greatest cricketers, shot through with intimate details, Saptarshi Sarkar tackles controversies around the legendary cricketer head on. Racy and gripping, Sourav Ganguly: Cricket, Captaincy and Controversy investigates the big events in Dada's interesting career. It probes the symbiotic relationship between the man and the cricketer. What was Ganguly thinking before a match? Why did he demand that the grass be trimmed just before start of play at the Nagpur pitch? What was the Indian dressing room like? What was that Greg Chappell chapter all about? An unflinching biography of a man who never shied away from controversies, this is as much a ready reckoner for Sourav Ganguly fans as it is an examination of a crucial era in Indian cricket.

    This was taking place as the Cold War slid into the subcontinent and complex relationships with India's neighbours—China, Pakistan and Nepal—were taking shape. Looking back on those crucial years with a discerning eye for the interplay of personalities—Nehru, Krishna Menon, or S. Radhakrishnan, for instance—Rasgotra assesses their influence on events and their impact on the evolution of Indian diplomacy.For over three decades Rasgotra's assignments took him to Nepal, Britain and France, among other countries, as well as twice to the United States. His account of Nixon and Kissinger, and the mix of truculence and persuasion in their dealings with Mrs Gandhi in the run up to the 1971 Bangladesh war, sheds new light on the events of that time. His tenure as foreign secretary covered a period of great change and A Life in Diplomacy provides a ringside view of the beginnings of ethnic violence in Sri Lanka, the last years of the Cold War, the negotiations on the formation of SAARC, Mrs Gandhi's assassination and the Bhopal gas disaster.This is a compelling, authoritative account of a personal and professional journey; a reflective look at the leaders, events and forces that formed relations between India and the world over fifty years.

    Later, this Bermondsey boy would become known as Tommy Steele . In this engaging memoir Tommy recalls his childhood years growing up in Bermondsey. He relives with great fondness Saturdays as a young boy, spent gazing at the colourful posters for the Palladium and days spent wandering up Tower Bridge Road to Joyce's Pie Shop for pie and mash. But he also brings to life with extraordinary vividness what it was like to live through the devastation of the Blitz. Yet it was once he joined the merchant navy and began singing and performing for his fellow seamen that his natural ability as an entertainer marked him out as a favourite. And it was while ashore in America that he became hooked on rock'n'roll and a legend was born . From Tommy's humble beginning to life at sea and finally as a performer, Bermondsey Boy is a colourful, charming and deeply engaging memoir from a much-loved entertainer.

    Ghias Beg isn’t traveling light; he has with him a pregnant wife and three small children. When his family stops at Qandahar—which is today in modern-day Afghanistan, at that time was on the outer fringe of the Mughal Empire—his wife gives birth to a baby girl named Mehrunnisa. Thirty-four years later, this winter child will become an Emperor’s wife and the most powerful woman in that Mughal dynasty. Mehrunnisa is The Twentieth Wife of Emperor Jahangir, Akbar’s son, a woman so beloved of her husband that he grants her most of the powers of sovereignty. She signs on imperial documents called farmans and mints coins in her name and truly comes into power during the sixteen years of her marriage to Jahangir in The Feast of Roses . Mehrunnisa’s niece (her brother’s daughter and Ghias’ granddaughter) marries one of Jahangir’s sons, Prince Khurram who becomes Emperor Shah Jahan after his father’s death. When this niece dies in childbirth in June of 1631, Shah Jahan builds the Taj Mahal in her memory. But it is Mehrunnisa’s grand-niece (and Ghias’ great-granddaughter) Princess Jahanara who takes center stage in the third novel of the trilogy, Shadow Princess . She’s seventeen years old when her mother dies and her father, in his grief, leans upon her to the extent that she’s never allowed to marry. Throughout her life, Jahanara has to pacify warring brothers who each want the throne after their father, and engages in a rivalry with a sister, Roshanara—in supporting differing brothers politically, and in falling in love with the same noble at court, Najabat Khan. Powerful in her father’s harem, immensely rich with half her mother’s estate bestowed upon her and all of her mother’s yearly income, Jahanara still fails to turn the course of India’s history and has to find love with Najabat Khan in unconventional ways.

    This is the story of a time when brother fought brother and Christian fought Christian. Power was all and Spain was riven by strife which was political, religious and familial! One man came from the harsh land of Castile to make one land and one state. Spain truly began with Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, El Campeador, El Cid. His story is told through the eyes of the warrior who spent his life at his side. William Redbeard came from humble origins but he was destined for greatness too as he walked in the seemingly endless shadow of El Cid. This first instalment in the Chronicles tells of Rodrigo’s rise to prominence when he became the champion of Prince Sancho of Castile. This is but the beginning of a tale which still stirs the blood a millennium after it began.

    Under trial for authorizing the murder of a political opponent, Bhutto writes a scathing denunciation of military dictatorship, rebuts the allegations against his government made in General Zia-ul-Haq's White Paper, and writes of his achievements.Bhutto predicts that, should his murder be permitted, the rivers of the Indus Valley will turn red with blood. Smuggled out of prison and published in neighbouring India, If I Am Assassinated continues to be the most controversial piece of political literature to have been written in Pakistan.

    Men of peace are spreading the message of the Buddha even as monks are being tortured in the dungeons of Pataliputra. In Magadha, all talk is about the impending war against Kalinga. While King Ashoka plots the movements of his ships and cavalry, Queen Asandhimitra broods over the growing unrest in the kingdom. There is only one man they can both trust to take them through this period of uncertainty and looming danger: the enigmatically named Brahmin, skilful spymaster and custodian of Magadha’s best-kept secrets. Lush with historical detail and unforgettable characters, The Brahmin is an intricately plotted novel that seeks to recreate a near-mythical period in India’s past.

    The young and dashing Sultan Kowaishi has just returned from London to Bombay after passing his barrister exam. Among the first persons he meets is Mohammed Ali Jinnah, already an advocate of note, and is quickly drawn to him. It is also the time when Jinnah decides to join the Indian National Congress, soon to become its brightest star. The stir against the British rule holds no interest for Sultan but it attracts his wife Rehana, and, inexorably, weaves its way into their lives.In this brilliant saga of love and betrayal, pain and redemption, set amidst the long struggle for freedom and its terrible twin, the call for Pakistan, we confront questions that are as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago. Questions of identity, of purpose, of the shackles of a thousand memories . . .

    Almost five decades ago, his father had laid the foundations of this vast Samrajya guided by the famed Guru Arya Chanakya. But now, the wealth and glory of the past has subsided...As the Samrat’s health continues to decline due to an unknown illness, problems are arising all over his realm. There is infighting and rebellion. No clear successor to him is present. Ninety nine of his sons stand in line waiting for his throne...Bharathvarsha needs a Chandragupta once again. And it needs a Chanakya too. Can the young Prince Asoka, who is the least favorite son of the Samrat, fill in the boots of his grandfather? Can Radhagupta, a mere Councilor of the Court be what Chanakya was to all the Aryas? Begin a new adventure with the first book of the Asoka trilogy as you read to find the answer to one great question-'That who shall be the next Samrat of this holy land of the Aryas?'