Every Lost Country

From : The Globe and Mail

Photo : http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Every Lost Country,

by Steven Heighton,

Knopf Canada,

330 pages, $29.95

Yes, Heighton's ideas are once again big and difficult – What does it mean to behave responsibly in a world fractured and fragmented by political and personal irresponsibilities, foreign and domestic? – and his language continues to grow in beauty.
But there's a quantum leap in insecurity, social complexity and intensity of the storytelling between his second and third novels. There are no longueurs: Every page, minor character and plot twist matters. Every Lost Country not only rivets readers to their seats, it challenges them to rethink the David-and-Goliath inequalities of this new millennium.

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BUREAUCRACY AND SOCIETY

From : The Hindu


Phopto : http://www.hindu.com/





BUREAUCRACY AND SOCIETY- The IAS at Work: Edited by Rakesh Hooja; Rawat Publications, Satyam Apartments, Sector 3, Jawahar Nagar,


Jaipur-302004. Rs. 695.

Winston Churchill faulted them for “arrant pedantry” when it was pointed out to him that he had ended a sentence with a preposition. Margaret Thatcher would not regard them highly either. Nearer home, Jawaharlal Nehru found them “cutting the red-tape along.” Yet, none could either downsize or dispense with bureaucracy.
Experience
Fifteen officers of the Indian Administrative Service share their experiences at work in Rajasthan. Experience is the best school in that the test comes earlier and lessons are learnt later. One of the officers, Rajagopal, has specifically mentioned the lesson at the end of every episode he narrates. Since the early 1950s and ‘60s, the role of the civil servant has shrunk to the mere mechanics of implementing the policies of the rulers, and ensuring propriety of procedure and accountability to audit. The contributors, while in service, have been professional and objective enough to go along even with policies and programmes considered unviable and did not, as a rule, stick their neck out.





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A Visual History of the Soviet Union

From : The Guardian

Photo : http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Red Star Over Russia: A Visual History of the Soviet Union
David King's collection of images provides a valuable record of the Soviet Union's elusive past.

David King is the outstanding individual collector of visual artefacts from the Soviet past. His house is almost a museum by itself, and he offers a generous welcome to historians wishing to see his treasures. King himself has a Trotskyist inclination that finds expression in his selection of images for Red Star Over Russia. At the same time, he welcomes open debate. He is an example to us all.

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Chalk and the abyss

From : Signandsight

Photo : http://www.signandsight.com/

The secret transcripts of Heidegger's notorious seminar "On the Essence and Concepts of Nature, History and the State" have been published for the first time.

By ALEXANDER KISSLER.

He bitter word stands in the room. It casts huge shadows over his work. Was Martin Heidegger a "Nazi philosopher"? Did Heidegger, as his student the philosopher Ernesto Grassi emphasised in 1988, derive "justification from his theoretical principles for an anti-Semitic and National Socialist position"? The case against the dark thinker is made with recourse to passages from his "Being and Time" as well as an assortment of statements, letters and reports and, above all, the Freiburg rectoral address and a seminar from the winter semester of 1933/34.

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TOP FROM THE GUARDIAN:

Bestsellers Paperback
Full List

Britain's Lost Cities
Gavin Stamp

Nomad
Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Reluctant Bride
Lucy Mangan

Moon Tiger
Penelope Lively

Cringe
Sarah Brown

Nomad: From Islam to America.

Top : From the New York Times

Photo : http://www.thedailybeast.com/

The Muslim mind needs to be opened. Above all, the uncritical Muslim attitude toward the Quran urgently needs to change, for it is a direct threat to world peace.

On a recent visit to Washington, I hopped into a cab at Union Station. Those who have used such transport in D.C. will be aware that the chances of landing an African cabbie are 9 in 10, and this African cohort is predominantly Eritrean, Ethiopian, or Somali. My driver on this occasion was Somali, and after a few pleasantries—How long have you lived in America? Do you still have family in Mogadishu? How old are your children?—I asked the man a less banal question: “What do you think of Ayaan Hirsi Ali… you know, the Somali lady?” He swiveled his head to fix me with his gaze, and then turned it back to the road. “Very bad person,” he said, after a strained pause. “We think she is a bitch. We hate her.”

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Top From the New Yorks Time :

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Turns 50, and Parties Are Planned
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Books of The Times: Limbaugh, Somewhat Airbrushed
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That Summer in Italy
Paper Chase
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Just One Look
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Carver Country

From : Review

Photo : http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/

On this day in 1938 Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, the family moving three years later to Yakima, Washington, where Carver grew up. Carver's autobiographical essay,

"My Father's Life," describes the sort of challenges that reappear in his acclaimed short stories: the grind of poverty, the collapse of love, the ruin of alcohol. Especially, and from early on, the alcohol; the following lines are from "Luck," a poem in which a nine-year-old wakes to an empty house and the leftovers of his parents' party:
…What luck, I thought.
Years later,
I still wanted to give up
friends, love, starry skies,
for a house where no one
was home, no one coming back,
and all I could drink.

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Top from the Los Angeles Times :

Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers

1.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, cook and college graduate intertwine.
51
2.
Innocent by Scott Turow (Grand Central: $27.99) Rusty Sabich and Tommy Molto return to the courtroom after the mysterious death of Rusty's wife.
1
3.
Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris (Ace: $25.95) Sookie Stackhouse copes with loss and paranormal politics.
1
4.
Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende (HarperCollins: $26.99) The intertwined lives of a young slave girl and plantation owner on a Caribbean island in the 1700s
1
5.
The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan (Hyperion: $17.99) Siblings battle Egyptian gods to uncover family secrets and find their Egyptologist father.
1
6.
The Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon: $24.95) Multiple adventures await sleuth Precious Ramotswe.
3
7.
The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan (Disney Hyperion: $17.99) Percy Jackson and his army of demigods battle the Lord of Time.
22
8.
Burned by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast (St. Martin's/Griffin: $17.99) Teen drama reigns in this supernatural fantasy.
3
9.
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (Atlantic Monthly: $24.95) The ravages of the Vietnam War told by an ambitious young soldier.
7
10.
Solar by Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese: $26.95) A physicist tries to reinvigorate his career (at a colleague's expense).

'The Sandbox'

From : Soho

Photo : http://www.latimes.com/

Although the film "The Hurt Locker" earned the industry's highest awards, some critics said that the movie was so riddled with inaccuracies that it could not be taken seriously.

The film's reckless protagonist, Sgt. 1st Class William James, leader of a bomb-disposal team, consistently performs acts that would get most soldiers relieved of duty. His crazed behavior culminates in a miles-long nighttime run, in fatigues, through the heart of Baghdad, during the height of the insurgency. Somehow, no one gets hurt, and James, who has, we are told, defused some 870 bombs, is never punished. Many forgave this grossly unrealistic depiction of war because director Kathryn Bigelow was able to create a gripping, tense and moving story of men in combat.

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Top from the Los Angeles Times

Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers
1.
Mom by Dave Isay (Penguin Press: $21.95) A collection of stories celebrating American moms.
2
2.
The Big Short by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton: $27.95) How the U.S. economy was driven to collapse by the bond and real estate markets.
9
3.
Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle (Free Press: $25) A Jesuit priest recounts working with L.A. youth through his gang intervention program.
7
4.
The Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman (Harper: $25.99) The stand-up comic known for her salty humor shares her life story.
3
5.
Spoken From the Heart by Laura Bush (Scribner: $30) The former First Lady’s memoir of growing up in West Texas and life in the White House.
1
6.
The Men Who Would Be King by Nicole Laporte (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: $28) The rise and fall of DreamWorks Studios.
1
7.
This Time Together by Carol Burnett (Harmony: $25) The comedian’s humorous look at her career and life in showbiz.
4
8.
The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary by Jeff Kinney (Amulet: $14.95) Behind the scenes during the making of the movie.
9
9.
---- My Dad Says by Justin Halpern (HarperCollins: $15.99) A son’s compilation of his elderly father’s ramblings and observations.
1
10.
Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang by Chelsea Handler (Grand Central: $25.99) Essays and amusing tales from the comic's personal life.

Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

From : The Guardian


Photo : http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/





Thousand Autumns of Jacob De ZoetDavid Mitchell
Our price: £15.99
RRP: £18.99
Publisher: SCEPTRE
Publication Date : 13/05/2010

A panoramic novel set in Japan in the year 1799, from the author of "Cloud Atlas" etc. The port of Nagasaki and the island of Dejima has been shut off from the world for centuries; no one can leave and foreigners are excluded. But an artificial island is manned by a handful of European traders, and for Dutch clerk Jacob de Zoet, a dark adventure of duplicity, love, guilt, faith and murder is about to begin. 'One of the most brilliantly inventive writers of this, or any country' "Independent"


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AN INDIAN FOR ALL SEASONS

From : The Hindu


Photo : http://www.hindu.com/






A colonial intellectual
K. C. SIVARAMAKRISHNAN
The British accused him of alternating between adulation of the British and sedition .

AN INDIAN FOR ALL SEASONS - R.C. DUTT: Meenakshi Mukherjee; Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. Rs. 399.
This is a comprehensive biography about one of the stalwarts in Indian history, whose beginnings were somewhat uncertain. Barely 20 years old, Romesh Chunder Dutt set out, without informing his family, on a slow boat from Calcutta to Diamond Harbour and thence to catch a steamer to London. To study and compete for the ICS, “the heaven-born service,” was the objective.




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Communism, Rising and Falling

From : Dissent Magazine

Photo : http://dissentmagazine.org/

The Red Flag: A History of CommunismBy David PriestlandGrove Press, 2009
The Rise and Fall of CommunismBy Archie Brown,Harper Collins, 2009
Zhivago’s Children: The Last IntelligentsiaBy Vladislav Zubok,Harvard University Press, 2009.





A RUSSIAN JOKE begins with the following question: “What is communism?” To which the joke gives a simple answer: “Communism is the longest path from capitalism to capitalism.” This joke, in its exploitation of the ironies implicit in communism’s long decline, could only have been told after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
The sharpest of these ironies is that communism could be the historical midwife of capitalism. But in a similar contortion of theoretical logic, communism—which, for Marx, was rigorously internationalist— has also served as an agent of nationalism. In its rise and fall, from the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century, communism was “most successful when it could enmesh itself within local nationalisms,” as David Priestland writes in his new survey, The Red Flag.





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Sex and Stravinsky by Barbara Trapido

From : The Telegraph


Photo : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/





Louise Levene relishes Sex and Stravinsky by Barbara Trapido, a carefully choreographed tale of missed opportunities and triumphant rebirth .

Sex and Stravinsky has to be up there with 'Golfing for Cats’ or 'Nazi Quilts’ for sheer crossover appeal, but the title of Barbara Trapido’s seventh novel encapsulates the Whitbread winner’s gift for gratifying a reader’s baser urges for absorbing, characterful narratives while nourishing their brain and touching their heart.
The story flits confidently between north Oxford, Senegal and the Durban suburbs and spans 20 years in the lives of two mismatched couples, their parents, their grumpy teenage daughters and the skeletons in their cupboards.





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Top From : Los Angeles Times





Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers1.





The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, cook and college graduate intertwine. Weeks on the list: 502.


Solar by Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday: $26.95) A physicist tries to save the world and reinvigorate his career (at a colleague’s expense). Weeks on the list: 53.


Burned by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast (St. Martin’s/Griffin: $17.99) Teen drama reigns in this supernatural fantasy. Weeks on the list: 24.


Deliver Us From Evil by David Baldacci (Grand Central: $27.99) Operative Shaw pursues a human trafficker and arms dealer. Weeks on the list: 25.


The Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon: $24.95) Multiple adventures await sleuth Precious Ramotswe. Weeks on the list: 2

Best books of the decade

From : Boston . com


Photo : http://www.boston.com/





Harry Potter did not make my list.

There. I said it. I read every last one of the wizard's adventures, I swear, but now the whole experience is kind of a blur of Quidditch and complicated potions. And while there is no denying their influence on book publishing, I can't very well list books I can barely remember. There are, undoubtedly, plenty of other books I have forgotten, or just never got around to reading.


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Top From the Los Angeles Times





Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers1.





The Big Short by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton: $27.95) How the U.S. economy was driven to collapse by the bond and real estate markets. Weeks on the list: 82.


The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary by Jeff Kinney (Amulet: $14.95) Behind the scenes during the making of the movie. Weeks on the list: 83.


Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang by Chelsea Handler (Grand Central: $25.99) Essays and amusing tales from the comic’s personal life. Weeks on the list: 34.


Mom by Dave Isay (Penguin Press: $21.95) A collection of stories celebrating American moms. Weeks on the list: 15.


Oprah by Kitty Kelley (Crown: $30) A probing account into the queen of all media’s empire and her personal life. Weeks on the list: 3

The Atlantic and its Enemies

From : The Guardian

Photo : Bettmann/Corbis

The Atlantic and its Enemies: A Personal History of the Cold War by Norman Stone
Norman Stone has produced a lively and idiosyncratic account of the cold war that is none the worse for an occasional tendency to ramble, says Geoffrey Wheatcroft.

Who won the cold war, and how, and why? The obvious answer to the first question is that the west won, the United States and its western European allies. But this wasn't a victory for armed force like the preceding defeat of Germany and Japan. Nato was arguably the most successful military alliance there has ever been; and yet when the Soviet Union imploded 20 years ago it still possessed a full nuclear arsenal and, unlike the German army in the woefully misleading phrase nationalists used after 1918, the red army really was "undefeated on the battlefield", at least in the west.

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From : The New York Time :

Paperback Mass-Market Fiction

1
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. (Vision, $9.99.) A New York detective raising 10 children alone must stop a killer.
2
2
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, by Stieg Larsson. (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, $7.99.) A hacker and a journalist investigate the disappearance of a Swedish heiress.
8
3
SUMMER ON BLOSSOM STREET, by Debbie Macomber. (Mira, $7.99.) People seeking a fresh start join the Knit to Quit class in Seattle.
2
4
WICKED PREY, by John Sandford. (Berkley, $9.99.) The Minneapolis detective Lucas Davenport deals with mayhem occasioned by the Republican convention.
1
5*
THE LAST SONG, by Nicholas Sparks. (Grand Central, $7.99.) A 17-year-old spends the summer with her father in North Carolina and finds many kinds of love.
11
6
THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, by Stieg Larsson. (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, $7.99.) A Swedish hacker becomes a murder suspect. Excerpt
7
7
RELENTLESS, by Dean Koontz. (Bantam, $9.99.) A writer is pursued by a sociopathic critic.
2
8
DEAD AND GONE, by Charlaine Harris. (Ace, $7.99.) Sookie Stackhouse seeks the killer of a werepanther.
5
9*
WILD FIRE, by Christine Feehan. (Jove, $7.99.) A leopard shifter from Panama and the woman he betrayed, a shifter from Borneo, cross paths again in the jungle.
2
10
SWEET TEA AT SUNRISE, by Sherryl Woods. (Mira, $7.99.) A single mom returned to Serenity, S.C., goes to work for the sexy owner of a radio station; a Sweet Magnolia novel.

Pops as Pop

From : Review
Pho. :bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/

Like millions of other Americans.






I was fortunate enough to witness a Louis Armstrong show once, in the winter of 1959. A college freshman too young to have seen much live jazz, I strode home through the snow babbling happily about a concert where the only songs I recall recognizing were "Muskrat Ramble" and "Mack the Knife." Back at the dorm, however, a sophomore called me on my naiveté. Armstrong was corny, I was informed, and it must have sunk in, because the next time I listened seriously to Louis Armstrong was in 1975, when Gary Giddins got evangelical about the Smithsonian's canonizing Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines 1928.




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Was Tolstoy Right?

From : The Book

Photo : www.tnr.com/

Russia Against Napoleon:

The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace
by Dominic Lieven
Viking Books, 656 pp., $35.95

Writing about Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in War and Peace, Tolstoy remarked: “The historians provided cunningly devised evidence of the foresight and genius of the generals, who of all the blind instruments of history were the most enslaved and involuntary.” It is not a comment that Dominic Lieven would endorse. His new book is all about the foresight and genius of generals—and politicians as well. More specifically, it is about the foresight and genius of Russian generals and politicians. If Napoleon failed in his bid for European domination, Lieven argues, the credit goes first and foremost to Tsar Alexander I, and to the generals and administrators who served him

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Nietzsche: A Philosophy in Context

From : From the New York Times

Photo : http://www.nytimes.com/

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
A Philosophical Biography
By Julian Young
Illustrated. 649 pp. Cambridge University Press. $45

One of the pitfalls of writing a biography of a great philosopher is the temptation to reduce important ideas to mere psychology, an outgrowth of some fluke in the philosopher’s personal development. Julian Young, a professor at the University of Auckland and Wake Forest University, has for the most part avoided this trap by writing a “philosophical” biography of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) in which the life story provides context but ultimately not explanation for the ideas. In so doing he has provided a serious and readable, if not exactly ground-breaking, introduction to Nietzsche’s “philosophy with a hammer.”

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For the Soul of France:

From : Commentary Magazine

Photo : www.nytimes.com

For the Soul of France:Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus

By Frederick Brown Knopf,

304 pages

What does it mean to be French? A simple enough question, and one that has exercised many minds over the centuries, but to ask it these days in Paris seems akin to drawing swords. Consider what happened to President Nicolas Sarkozy when at the end of 2009 he launched a nationwide series of “town hall” discussions on the issue of French identity. With France home to some five to six million Muslims—the most of any country in Western Europe—Sarkozy’s desire for an open exchange of views on the elusive quality of “Frenchness” touched a nerve. His aim, it appeared, was to siphon off support from the anti-immigration, far-Right National Front in the March regional elections (a failed aim, as it turned out). Still, the vehemence of the criticisms leveled at Sarkozy—himself the son of a Hungarian immigrant—verged on hysteria.

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ORIENTALISM, EMPIRE, AND NATIONAL CULTURE

From : The Hindu

Photo : http://www.hindu.com/

ORIENTALISM, EMPIRE, AND NATIONAL CULTURE,

India 1770-1880: Michael S. Dodson; Foundation Books, 4381/4,

Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002. Rs. 395.

In this book, Michael Dodson examines the historical ontology of orientalism, empire, and nationalism — the three major obsessions of the last generation — in the light of rarely used sources in Sanskrit, Hindi, and English, and with fresh insights into the making of modern India. It explores the varied scholarly manifestations in literature, history, and linguistics, related

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MOST POPULAR - BOOKS

For Crime, Is Anatomy Destiny?
Books of The Times: Floating a Wild Plan and a Dead Man to Defeat the Nazis
The Jewish Question: British Anti-Semitism
Books of The Times: The Sexual Revolution Dissected
The Jewish Question: Martin Heidegger
Charting Creativity: Signposts of a Hazy Territory
Books of The Times: The Man Who Broke Babe’s Record
Essay: Theory, Literature, Hoax
Nietzsche: A Philosophy in Context
Hot Planet, Cold Facts

H G Wells: Another Kind of Life

From : The Telegraph


Photo : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst finds that H G Wells was a lothario even into his old age. Michael Sherborne's biography, Another Kind of Life, is a brilliant portrait of the man and the writer .


A photograph taken in 1895 shows H G Wells whizzing along on an early bicycle, with his wife perched nervously on the handlebars. It was a characteristic choice of transport: 1895 was also the year he published The Time Machine, which carefully avoids describing the machine itself in any detail, but pauses lovingly over its “saddle”, as if Wells thought of it as little more than a customised bicycle speeding towards the future. It was one of the many bicycles that wobble their way through his fiction, like little models of the freedom and progress he championed throughout his life. Still, given the number of lovers he managed to collect over the years, as revealed in this sympathetic but clear-eyed biography, he would have been better off learning to drive a bus.

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MOST POPULAR - BOOKS

For Crime, Is Anatomy Destiny?
The Jewish Question: British Anti-Semitism
Books of The Times: The Man Who Broke Babe’s Record
Books of The Times: The Sexual Revolution Dissected
Charting Creativity: Signposts of a Hazy Territory
The Jewish Question: Martin Heidegger
Essay: Theory, Literature, Hoax
Nietzsche: A Philosophy in Context
Hot Planet, Cold Facts
The Némirovsky Paradox

The Jewish Question: Martin Heidegger

From : The New York Times


Photo : http://www.nytimes.com/








It may seem surprising that so many books continue to be written debating Martin Heidegger’s Nazi affiliations, since the fact that Heidegger was a Nazi has never been in dispute.

How could it be, when the great philosopher took office as rector of Freiburg University in April 1933 specifically in order to carry out the Gleichschaltung, or “bringing into line,” of the school with Hitler’s new party-state? Didn’t he tell the student body, in a speech that November, that “the Führer and he alone is the present and future German reality and its law”? After the war, didn’t he go out of his way to minimize Nazi crimes, even describing the Holocaust, in one notorious essay, as just another manifestation of modern technology, like mechanized agriculture?





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Top for the L. A. Times :

Top 5 Hardcover Non-Fiction Bestsellers



1. The Big Short by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton: $27.95) How the U.S. economy was driven to collapse by the bond and real estate markets. Weeks on the list: 7



2. The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary by Jeff Kinney (Amulet: $14.95) Behind the scenes during the making of the movie. Weeks on the list: 7



3. The Bridge by David Remnick (Knopf: $29.95) The New Yorker editor’s biography of President Obama as pragmatist, seeker and civil rights symbol. Weeks on the list: 3



4. Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle (Free Press: $25) Jesuit priest Boyle recounts working with L.A. youth through his gang intervention program. Weeks on the list: 4



5. Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth (Scribner: $24) The connection between eating and core beliefs that brings fulfillment. Weeks on the list: 4

Death and the Dishwasher

From : The Book

Photo : http://www.tnr.com/

Making Toast: A Family Story
by Roger Rosenblatt
Ecco, 166 pp., $21.99

By the rules of American book reviewing, I ought not to write about this beautiful book. I am hobbled by the most damning disqualification of all: I have a conflict of interest. Not the appearance of one; an actual one. It is not that I once met a man whose second wife went to school with a woman who had a drink with a cousin of the dentist who treats the children of the book's copy-editor, which would have been damaging enough. It is that I know the author of Making Toast. Worse, he was my predecessor in my distinguished position, which is distinguished not least because he once held it.

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Top for the L. A. Times :

Top 5 Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers

1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, cook and college graduate intertwine in a Mississippi town. Weeks on the list: 49

2. Wild Child by T.C. Boyle (Viking : $25.95) This collection’s title story refers to a tale based on Victor of Aveyron, the feral child discovered in the wilds of France in 1797. Weeks on the list: 2

3. Deliver Us From Evil by David Baldacci (Grand Central: $27.99) Mysterious operative Shaw returns to catch a human trafficker and arms dealer alongside a British femme fatale. Weeks on the list: 1

4. The Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon: $24.95) Multiple challenges and adventures await sleuth Precious Ramotswe in Botswana. Weeks on the list: 1

5. The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan (Disney Hyperion: $17.99) Percy Jackson and his army of demigods battle to stop the Lord of Time. Weeks on the list: 20

Growth or environment?

From : The Hindu


Photo : http://www.hindu.com/

Altered patterns of consumption which are less wasteful of resources will provide a lasting solution .








THE ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY READER: Edited by Martin Reynolds, Chris Blackmore, Mark J. Smith; Books for Change, 139, Richmond Road, Bangalore-560025. Rs. 450.
The ‘development versus environment' debate has been going on endlessly. A major reason is that the proponents of development have not been exposed to a true appreciation of the intrinsic and extrinsic values of nature that defy the conventional cost-benefit analysis. The need of the hour, in the words of Wangari Maathai, is to realise that “in making sure that other species survive we will be ensuring the survival of our own.”





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Life in an Awkward Position

From : The Wall Street Journal


Photo : http://online.wsj.com/






How an eccentric guru and charming hustler made yoga popular in America.

Several decades ago, you would have received a baffled stare if you had asked a stranger what a "downward facing dog" was. Today most strangers would nod knowingly and point you to their yoga studio, where the "downward facing dog" (feet and hands planted on the ground, torso stretched into an inverted "V") and other poses are common practices for the more than 20 million people who study yoga in the U.S.

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Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

From : The Washington Monthly

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Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallaceby David LipskyBroadway, 352 pp.

One struggles to find a concise, representative anecdote about the late David Foster Wallace for an audience of politically minded readers. Wallace, who committed suicide in 2008 at age forty-six, was the most promising and accomplished writer of his generation. An athlete of prolixity, he published a celebrated novel of 1,100 pages called Infinite Jest, several meaty volumes of short stories, a monograph or two, and a pair of essay collections filled with footnotes that had their own footnotes. He tended to avoid prescriptions or answers, instead plumbing the complexity of topics like grammar, tennis, state fairs, and television. He was not especially political.

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Top Five Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers

Form : The Wall Street Journal


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The Wrong Way To Get to Green
Once you've carpeted the wilderness with wind-farm turbines, and crushed any guilt about the birds you're about to kill, prepare to be underwhelmed and underpowered.

Al Gore has a dream, a dream increasingly shared, according to opinion surveys, by people all over the world. It is that the 19th century, the age of steam and iron and coal, will finally end and that, as Mr. Gore wrote in an article for the New York Times in 2008, the time will soon come for "21st-century technologies that use fuel that is free forever: the sun, the wind and the natural heat of the earth."
It might be better, and much more realistic, says Robert Bryce in "Power Hungry," to imagine our journey toward a "green" energy Arcadia in units of Saudi Arabia. "Over the past few years," he writes, "we have repeatedly been told that we should quit using hydrocarbons. Fine. Global daily hydrocarbon use is about 200 million barrels of oil equivalent, or about 23.5 Saudi Arabias per day. Thus, if the world's policy makers really want to quit using carbon-based fuels, then we will need to find the energy equivalent of 23.5 Saudi Arabias every day, and all of that energy must be carbon free."





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Top for L.A. Times





Top Five Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, a cook and a college graduate intertwine in a Mississippi town. Weeks on the list: 482.


Solar by Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese: $26.95) A physicist tries to reinvigorate his career (at a colleague’s expense) and save the world. Weeks on the list: 33.


Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott (Riverhead: $25.95) Fraught parents send their teenage daughter to a wilderness rehab program. Weeks on the list: 24.


Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel (Spiegel & Grau: $24) A Holocaust fable starring a donkey and her monkey companion. Weeks on the list: 15.


The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan (Disney Hyperion: $17.99) Percy Jackson and his army of demigods battle to stop the Lord of Time. Weeks on the list: 19


Top Five Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers1.The Big Short by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton: $27.95) How the U.S. economy was driven to collapse by the bond and real estate markets. Weeks on the list: 62.


Bridge by David Remnick (Knopf: $29.95) The New Yorker editor's telling of the evolution of President Obama reaching back to his fatherless childhood. Weeks on the list: 23. 13


Bankers by Simon Johnson and James Kwak (Pantheon: $26.95) A case for nationalization of banks resulting from the financial crisis and subsequent bailout. Weeks on the list: 14.


Oprah by Kitty Kelley (Crown: $30) A probing account behind the queen of all media’s empire and personal life. Weeks on the list: 1
5. Women Food and God by Geneen Roth (Scribner: $24) The connection between eating and core beliefs that brings fulfillment. Weeks on the list: 3

The Meaning of Life

From : Philosophy Now

Photo : http://www.philosophynow.org/

The Meaning of Life by Terry Eagleton
Ernest Dempsey finds out the meaning of life from Terry Eagleton.

Taking up a topic as philosophically huge as ‘the meaning of life’ is a daring task, not only because the question may sound rather pretentious in an age of techno-commercial preoccupation, but also because of the vastness and vagueness of the concepts of both ‘meaning’ and ‘life’. The vagueness makes it hard to know where to start, and the vastness clouds one’s certainty how and where to wrap it up. And yet, not inquiring into the meaning of life at all would feel like an intellectual swindle, with the associated burden of some nameless guilt – much like in Kafka’s The Trial. Taking the question up as a serious philosophical inquiry, one of the world’s leading contemporary academic critics, Terry Eagleton of the University of Lancaster, attempts to ‘pressure’ conventional wisdom on the topic.

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Top for the L.A. Time :

Top Five Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers

1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, a cook and a college graduate intertwine in a Mississippi town. Weeks on the list: 482.

Solar by Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese: $26.95) A physicist tries to reinvigorate his career (at a colleague’s expense) and save the world. Weeks on the list: 33.

Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott (Riverhead: $25.95) Fraught parents send their teenage daughter to a wilderness rehab program. Weeks on the list: 24.

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel (Spiegel & Grau: $24) A Holocaust fable starring a donkey and her monkey companion. Weeks on the list:

15.The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan (Disney Hyperion: $17.99) Percy Jackson and his army of demigods battle to stop the Lord of Time. Weeks on the list: 19

A Kink in his Crock: Norway's Nobel Nazi

From : Powell's Books

Photo : http://www.powells.com/

Knut Hamsun: Dreamer & Dissenterby Ingar Sletten Kolloen .

Once the only Knut Americans knew was Knute Rockne. Although the lesser-known Knut was born a generation before the celebrated one, and obtained a Nobel Prize in literature, our better-known Knute won a record number of football games for the University of Notre Dame. A Catholic God gave his team these victories in spite of their Lutheran leadership. The famous coach-to-be picked up the additional "e" when, at the age of five, his family emigrated from Norway to Chicago. Only Ireland sent a greater proportion of its impoverished population to the United States, and these Norsemen naturally headed toward areas with familiar climates, similar ores. Michigan had iron, Minnesota lakes, North Dakota snow, but none had mountains. This absence had to be suffered.

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Maritime history of pre-modern India

From : The Hindu


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COASTAL HISTORIES SOCIETY AND ECOLOGY IN PREMODERN INDIA: Edited by Yogesh Sharma;
MARITIME INDIA - Trade, Religion and Polity in the Indian Ocean: Pius Malekandathil; Both the books pub. by Primus Books, Virat Bhavan, Mukherjee Nagar, Commercial Complex, Delhi-110009. Rs. 695 each.




The two books under review complement each other in establishing the sea trade as an important driver of socioeconomic process in littoral societies that interacted primarily for trade. They highlight the social dynamics behind the changes in the ruling and trade patterns of the coastal region. Michael N. Pearson, the well known historian of the Indian Ocean, has written the foreword for both. Sea trade was known in the South from very early times and the Sangam literature is full of references to the overseas trade and the functioning of ports, with the state acting as a facilitator of trade and as the custodian of goods landing in the harbour. Almost everyone who came from the West was referred to as Yavanas in Sangam and there was cordial relationship between the state and the foreign trader.





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PIGS WON'T FLY

From : Literary Review


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Kenan MalikPIGS WON'T FLYWhat Darwin Got WrongBy Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (Profile Books 262pp £20







Evolution is weird - far weirder than Darwin ever imagined. But does that mean that Darwinism itself should go the way of the dinosaur and the dodo? That's the question that Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini pose in What Darwin Got Wrong.
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection rests on three elements: the existence of variation in a trait; the differential effects of such variation upon reproductive success; and a mechanism by which the trait is inherited. Little was known in Darwin's time of the principles underlying heredity and variation. It was the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel who started unravelling the story of genetic inheritance. His ideas were eventually fused with those of Darwin to create the 'Modern Synthesis', the foundation stone of contemporary evolutionary theory.





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