'The Mind's Eye'

From : Los Angeles Times
Photo : http://www.latimes.com

Book review: 'The Mind's Eye' by Oliver Sacks

The trained clinician once again invites readers to explore the mysteries of the human mind with a collection of essays on people with drastically altered perceptions, including the author himself.

"The Mind's Eye," a collection of essays on the ways in which we perceive the world (many of which have already appeared in some form, most notably in the New Yorker) is no different, introducing readers to a predictably unpredictable cast of characters: Lilian Kallir, a talented musician whose "musical alexia" (inability to read music) deepens into a devastating perceptual deficit; Patricia H., a gregarious art dealer whose stroke leaves her without language but still able to communicate; Howard Engel, a novelist who loses his ability to read but not his ability to write; Sue Barry, a neurobiologist whose sudden discovery of stereo vision radically alters the way she sees the world.

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From : The Guardian
Photo : www.guardianbookshop.co.uk

You are the Ref

By Paul Trevillion & Keith Hackett

Hardback

You know the drill. It's a penalty to the away side. Just as the kick is about to be taken, the home side's official mascot suddenly jumps up behind the net, dancing. The penalty-taker misses and turns to you in outrage. What do you do?

You are the Ref - the cult classic comic strip from Roy of the Rovers artist Paul Trevillion - puts you in the spotlight and asks the question: what would you decide?

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THE PLUNDERED PLANET

From : The Hindu
Photo : www.hindu.com

THE PLUNDERED PLANET — How to Reconcile Prosperity with Nature: Paul Collier; Allen Lane. Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhli-110017. Rs. 699.

This absorbing book on natural resources economics by Paul Collier of Oxford University can be divided into three parts: the first, an utilitarian treatment of natural resources management; the second, a prescription of policy and strategy to govern such management in poor but resource-rich countries: and the third, application of these principles to shaping a response to the challenge posed by global environmental issues like global warming. Along the way, the reader gets an interesting insight into how resources are being plundered, by both insiders and outsiders, in countries that are poor economically but rich in natural resources. Collier draws on his vast, and often trying, experience of advising African countries in ethically sound management of natural assets.

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Circumscribing Here

From : Powell`s Books
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Circumscribing Here

A review by Maryanne Hannan Fifty years before the publication of Arthur Sze's The Ginkgo Light, a Hollywood movie, If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium, satirized a group of tourists rushing through Europe with neither depth nor perception. Sze, a second-generation Chinese-American poet and translator with ten books to his credit, the recipient of numerous major literary prizes, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico, is thoughtful, erudite, the antithesis of shallow; reading his poetry, I sometimes felt like one of those frazzled tourists. I wanted a guidebook or at least a toehold purchase of his company.

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Six Days in Marapore

From : The Book
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Six Days in Marapore

by Paul Scott

University of Chicago Press, 284 pp., $15

A full half-century after E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, Paul Scott concluded The Raj Quartet, his magnificent series of books covering the final years of British rule on the subcontinent. Scott began his story around the time of Gandhi’s Quit India campaign in 1942, and continued it through the dissolution of imperial control and the brutal partition of the country


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We Wish You a Merry Christmas

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

The Passages of H.M

From : Los Angeles Times
Photo : www.latimes.com

Book review: 'The Passages of H.M.'

Jay Parini wrangles the often elusive Herman Melville onto the page in this deeply absorbing mix of fact, fiction and embedded literary quotation.

Doubleday: 454 pp., $26.95

"The time for me hasn't come yet: Some men are born posthumously," Nietzsche wrote in "Ecce Homo." It's a statement that might have provided comfort to Herman Melville, whose books — including "Moby-Dick" and his more popular early tales of seafaring adventures, "Typee" and "Omoo" — had been out of print for years when he died in 1891, at age 72, in his Manhattan home.


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From : Guardian
Photo : www.guardianbookshop.co.uk

Cook

By Rebecca Seal

Hardback

RRP £25.00

Our price: £17.50

You save: £7.50

The Observer Food Monthly has long been a huge hit with foodlovers, taking us behind the scenes at famous restaurants, revealing insights into the worlds of our best chefs and, above all, providing delectable recipes that we simply can't wait to try.

Now, for the first time, the best of those recipes have been brought together in a sumptuous book that will have your mouth watering from the very first page. Antonio Carluccio's stuffed lamb cutlets, Gordon Ramsey's mackerel paté, Sam and Eddie Hart's roast suckling pig, Fergus Henderson's bone marrow salad and Giorgio Locatelli's turkey meatballs all make an appearance, alongside recipes from The Ivy, Moro and the River Café. Not only that, you'll also find details of famous chefs' favourite 'secret ingredients' and hints on techniques sure to have even a novice chef cooking like a pro.

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A Life of Flannery O'Connor

From : New Republic
Photo : www.powells.com/review



The Way of Distortion

A review by Christopher Benfey

"I am one of those people who could die for his religion sooner than take a bath for it," Flannery O'Connor wrote during the spring of 1958, after her rich Savannah cousin Katie Semmes had paid for a pilgrimage to the healing waters of Lourdes for O'Connor, who was suffering from lupus, and for her mother, Regina. O'Connor managed to pare down the original itinerary, eliminating Dublin ("I bet that'll be real sickening") and "Baloney Castle" (as she insisted on calling Blarney Castle in Killarney) from the original tour package. Not wishing to disappoint her ninety-year-old Cousin Semmes, O...

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MY LIFE WITH THE TALIBAN

From : The Hindu
Photo : www.hindu.com

A fascinating memoir

NIRUPAMA SUBRAMANIAN

For anyone with even half an interest in Afghanistan, this book is a must read

MY LIFE WITH THE TALIBAN: by Abdul Salam Zaeef; Translated by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn; Hachette India, 612/614, Time Tower, MG Road, Sector 28, Gurgaon-122001. Rs. 495.

After Ahmed Rashid's definitive book on the Taliban, there have been few studied accounts of the movement that has managed to keep the U.S. military tied down in Afghanistan for a full nine years. But the war has ensured that, in the decade or so since the publication of Rashid's book, the world has come to know much more about this phenomenon called Taliban

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Young Mandela: The Revolutionary Years

From : The Book
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Young Mandela: The Revolutionary Years

by David James Smith

Little, Brown, and Co. 416 pp., $27.99

Midway through David James Smith’s absorbing account of the pre-Robben Island life of Nelson Mandela, the author breaks from his narrative to recount a scene in a hospital room in Johannesburg. In December 2004, Makgatho, Mandela’s estranged son from his first marriage, was dying of AIDS following years of alcoholism and aimlessness. In his last days, other members of Mandela’s family, including Ndileka—the daughter of Mandela’s elder son, who had died in a car crash in July 1969—

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HERO

From : The Daily Beast
Photo : www.thedailybeast.com



Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia By Michael Korda 784 pages. Harper. $36.

From the drawing of national boundaries to the use of IEDs, T.E. Lawrence’s impact on the Middle East was tremendous, writes his biographer Michael Korda—and says we must follow his example to fix the region.

T. E. Lawrence was far more than a glamorous, swashbuckling, heroic figure in flowing robes mounted on a camel, leading the Arab tribes against the Turks in World War One. Those who only know him as he was played—brilliantly—by Peter O’Toole, in David Lean’s masterful 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia, do not know the story of Lawrence’s life before 1917-1918, the two-year desert campaign that turned him into an enduring legend overnight, still less the pivotal role he played after the First World War in the creation of the modern Middle East. Today, when the Middle East is the main focus of our attention, and when Muslim insurgency, his specialty (and to some degree his invention) is the main weapon of our adversaries, the story of Lawrence’s life is more important than ever.

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TIMELESS INSPIRATOR

From : The HINDU
Photo : www.hindu.com

TIMELESS INSPIRATOR - Reliving Gandhi: Edited by Raghunath Mashelkar; Sakal Publications, Sakal Papers Limited, 595, Budhwar Peth, Pune-411002. Rs. 490.

How relevant is Mahatma Gandhi in the 21st century? As many as 46 eminent Indians from various fields were asked this question by Raghunath Mashelkar, the internationally acclaimed scientist, and their responses are presented in this book. Mashelkar himself has this to say about it: “… not just a mere collection of thoughts. Collectively, it is the road map, or the way of life; it is the anchor for a youngster in search of inspiration.” “Gandhian Engineering” is a concept enunciated by Mashelkar in a talk he delivered in Australia in April 2008. More recently, in July 2010, it was further refined and redefined as “Gandhian Innovation,” and published in the Harward Business Review as an article, authored jointly by him and C.K. Prahalad. The crux of it is how to generate “more, from less, for more people”.

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From : Bookforum
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Arrested Development

The incredible shrinking legacy of a 1960s culture hero

Kerry Howley

The Paul Goodman Reader

by Paul Goodman

$28.95 List Price

For more info visit:
Amazon • IndieBound

Almost everything written about Paul Goodman refers to him as a "man of letters," a designation interesting only in that it indicates a terrific triumph of self-branding. Goodman very much enjoyed calling himself a man of letters, or sometimes an "old-fashioned man of letters," so stated with an air of declinist resignation, and could be counted on to complain if described as anything less. He produced essays with titles like "The Present Plight of a Man of Letters," the gist of which was that the plight was rather taxing, and that they don't make 'em like Paul Goodman anymore.

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European Invasion

From : The Book
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The Foreign Film Renaissance on American Screens, 1946-1973

by Tino Balio

University of Wisconsin Press, 352 pp., $26.95

When I was sixteen and saw my first foreign films, Fellini’s 8 ½ and Bergman’s The Silence, the experience was altogether paradoxical. I felt smart and sophisticated, and part of a special fellowship with other members of the audience. But I also felt naïve, confused, and way out of my depth. Unable to understand their plots, let alone to fathom their deeper significances, these films were foreign in every sense—a completely different kind of movie experience.

Art films and foreign films have had a presence in America for a century, but the two decades after

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The Killing of Crazy Horse

From : The Wall Street Journal
Photo : http://online.wsj.com

A Sioux War Chief and His Many Enemies

The Killing of Crazy Horse

By Thomas Powers
Alfred A. Knopf, 568 pages, $30

The Lakota Siouxwar chief Crazy Horse now lives in legend—as he did among his own people years before his death in 1877. He was the "strange man of the Oglalas," painting his body and horse in unorthodox patterns yet rarely fighting on horseback, preferring to dismount to take careful aim. Modern historians portray him as his own people did during the years of the late 1860s and early 1870s: as the leading war chief of the allied tribes of the Lakota, teamed with Sitting Bull, the leading political and spiritual chief. Yet when Crazy Horse met his end, he had become the most divisive figure among the various tribes that had surrendered at the close of the Great Sioux War of 1876-77.


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Europe between Hitler and Stalin

From : The National
Photo :http://www.thenational.ae/

Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin

Matthew Price

Last Updated: Nov 26, 2010

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Timothy Snyder

Basic Books

Dh110

September 1, 1939, the day Hitler's army invaded Poland, is one of the most infamous dates of the 20th century. But how many of us recall September 17, 1939, when Soviet forces charged into Poland from the west? Germany and Russia, acting together on terms laid out in a secret pact, tried to destroy an entire country - and nearly succeeded. The sinister partnership would not last. Two years later, Hitler turned on Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union, which would spell doom for the Wehrmacht. In the West, we think of the heroics of D-Day, but it was the Soviet Army that ultimately broke the Nazi war machine; the British and Americans merely finished it off. Stalin ends up in the history books as a saviour, along with Churchill and Roosevelt, in the struggle against Hitler.

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CHILDREN OF ABRAHAM AT WAR

From : The Hindu
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Danger from unchecked messianism

ATUL ANEJA

Ahmad's focus is on the re-emergence of messianism, palpable in the three Abrahamic religions

CHILDREN OF ABRAHAM AT WAR - The Clash of Messianic Militarisms: Talmiz Ahmad; Akar Books, 28 E Pocket IV, Mayur Vihar Phase I, Delhi-110091. Rs. 1250.

The attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 and the furious backlash, in the form of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), have generated a torrent of literature on the the mind-boggling violence across the globe. The collapse of the twin towers in New York and the targeting of the Pentagon on 9/11 were swiftly followed by massive retaliatory strikes on Afghanistan, the home of the al-Qaeda, widely seen as the architect behind the attacks. The Afghan campaign was followed by the far more controversial U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The violence in Afghanistan and Iraq was accompanied by fresh attacks in the Palestinian territories, which Israel, a key ally of the U.S. in West Asia, sought to posit as an extension of the GWOT.

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In Wagner, So Much More Than Heaving Bosoms

From : The Chronicle
Photo : http://chronicle.com

In the most acclaimed of the operas and so-called music dramas of Richard Wagner, hefty figures from Germanic legend and myth grapple in torrid romances of mythic proportions.

Bosoms heave, all over the place—no audience member, and no Wagner critic, has ever been in doubt about that.

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From : F.T.
Photo : www.ft.com

Fate, Time and Language

Review by Anthony Gottlieb

Published: December 3 2010 22:09 | Last updated: December 3 2010 22:09

Fate, Time and Language: An Essay on Free Will, by David Foster Wallace, Columbia University Press, RRP$19.95, 252 pages

“Fate keeps on happening,” observed Lorelei Lee, the archetypal faux-dumb blonde, in one of Anita Loos’ sunny stories.

Lorelei always managed to be an innocent bystander as circumstances miraculously fell into place around her. For philosophers, however, fatalism is the idea that logic dictates that events unfold of their own accord, so that there is no point in trying to do anything about them. Futilism might be a better name for it.

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Life Times: Stories

From : The Guardian
Photo : www.guardian.co.uk

Life Times: Stories 1952-2007 by Nadine Gordimer – review

Two new collections map Nadine Gordimer's engagement with the moral dimension of her art. By Mark Gevisser

"The moment when I am no longer more than a writer, I will cease to write." This statement by Albert Camus is Nadine Gordimer's credo, she tells us in a 2006 essay collected in Telling Times, (Telling Times: Writing and Living 1950-2008, Bloomsbury, £35), the magisterial anthology of her non-fiction written since 1950, which serves as a companion to Life Times, a new collection of her short stories.

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Top :

Dennis Lehane's "Moonlight Mile" remains the top hardcover fiction seller.

"Life," by Keith Richards, returned to the top spot in hardcover nonfiction.

"Cutting for Stone" topped the paperback fiction list.

"Inside of a Dog" was the top paperback nonfiction seller.

Click below to see the full lists.

Letters from America

From : Barne and Noble
Photo :http://search.barnesandnoble.com




Young Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in the United States for the first time in May 1831, commissioned by the French government to study the American prison system. For the next nine months he and his companion, Gustave de Beaumont, traveled and observed not only prisons but also the political, economic, and social systems of the early republic. Along the way, they frequently reported back to friends and family members in France.

This book presents the first translation of the complete letters Tocqueville wrote during that seminal journey, accompanied by excerpts from Beaumont’s correspondence that provide details or different perspectives on the places, people, and American life and attitudes the travelers encountered.


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1. 1. History of the World in 100 Objects

   by Neil MacGregor £18.00

2. 2. Ultimate Guide to Mad Men

   by Will Dean £6.99

3. 3. Cook

   by Rebecca Seal £17.50

4. 4. Delete This at Your Peril

   by Bob Servant £4.99

5. 5. You are the Ref

   by Paul Trevillion & Keith Hack

The Last Lingua Franca

From : The Book
Photo : www.tnr.com

The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel

by Nicholas Ostler

Walker & Co., 352 pp., $28

While English is the most widely-spoken lingua franca in history, so-called common or working languages can be much less pervasive. Elamite, for example, was the submerged administrative language of the Persian Empire in the sixth century B.C.E. All official documents were written down in Elamite, but they were both composed and read out in Persian, the language of the illiterate ruling class. Then there is Pali, the language of Theravada Buddhism. No longer used in everyday conversation, Pali is written in different scripts in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Burma, and sounds different when read aloud by Thai and Burmese speakers. The identity of the language is almost obscured by its profusion of forms.

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History of the World in 100 Objects Neil MacGregor 18.00
2	Eyewitness Decade Roger Tooth
3	Delete This at Your Peril Bob Servant
4	Ultimate Guide to Mad Men Will Dean
5	You are the Ref Paul Trevillion & Keith Hackett
6	Comedy in a Minor Key Hans Keilson
7	Bedside Guardian 2010 Christopher Elliott
8	Autobiography of Mark Twain Mark Twain
9	It's All About the Bike Robert Penn
10	Cook Rebecca Seal

Mark Twain's Autobiography

From : Slate
Photo : www.slate.com

Samuel Clemens' Secret

What Mark Twain's Autobiography doesn't reveal.

Quick hype check: Mark Twain said he'd be so "frank and free and unembarrassed" in writing his memoirs that he'd be forced to suppress them until he'd been dead for 100 years. That anniversary arrived last year, but don't expect much in the first volume of the first unexpurgated edition of his autobiography to be shocking or new. On the contrary, The Autobiography of Mark Twain—95 percent of which has been published elsewhere, most of it in three previous editions of the work—is tame, unfrank, and highly embarrassed. Twain is not about to join Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin on the "Rhetoric of the Self" syllabus. Or maybe he would, if the amorphous mass of anecdotes and memories ushered into this doorstopper of a book were shaped into something smaller and more pungent. The claim to uniqueness made by the editors of this edition, however, is that they have included absolutely everything, either in the body of the Autobiography or else in a section called "Preliminary Manuscripts," in the order in which they think Twain meant for it to appear.

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TOP :

TITLE AUTHOR / PUBLISHER	THIS WEEK	LAST WEEK
Decision Points	1	1
George W. Bush/Crown Publishing Group
Unbroken	2	New
Laura Hillenbrand/Random House
Of Thee I Sing	3	New
Barack Obama/Knopf Books for Young Readers
Life	4	3
Keith Richards with James Fox/Little, Brown
Barefoot Contessa How Easy Is That?	5	4
Ina Garten/Clarkson N. Potter Publishers
Decoded	6	New
Jay-Z/Spiegel & Grau
Broke	7	2
Glenn Beck, Kevin Balfe/Threshold Editions
Guinness World Records	8	6
Guinness World Records/Guinness World Records
Getting Into the Vortex	9	New
Esther Hicks, Jerry Hicks/Hay House
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Do-It-Yourself Book	10	7
Jeff Kinney/Abrams