Book Excerpt

Editor's note: The following excerpt has been taken from the book, Polio: An Odyssey of Eradication written by Thomas Abraham. The book chronicles World Health Organization's twelve-year long campaign to wipe out polio. Despite billions of dollars being pumped into the project, it was and still is a hard long fight against the resilient virus, which affects many children across the world, even today. By Thomas Abraham India -- A Long Dirty War India has had a history of programmes to introduce…

Editor's note: Here is an excerpt from Ravi Subramanian’s latest book, Don’t Tell The Governor. Subramanian, who mostly pens stories about the financial world, has already written nine books. In this book he tells the fictional story of a character named Aditya Kesavan, who becomes the newest chief of RBI and deals with dangerous challenges as he copes with his new job and the finance ministry of India. Subramanian has previously won the Economist Crossword Book Award for three years in a row as well as the Golden Quill…

Editor's note: In the following excerpt of Michelle Obama's memoir, Becoming, the beloved first lady explores the same question that every modern independent woman must have found herself asking after her marriage -- question about personal identity vis-a-vis her identity as a wife. She recounts the early days of her marriage, when her husband and the ex-President of United States, Barack Obama, flew to Bali alone, to finish working on a book, leaving her behind in Chicago. Michelle Obama's memoir unfolds in her…

Editor's Note: Free Hit: The Story of Women's Cricket in India, written by Suprita Das, is the story of determination, grit and perseverance of women cricketers like Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami, who despite facing many obstacles for their gender -- be it pay gap, lack of sponsorship, or the biases of cricketing officials -- still made it as some of the most celebrated women cricketers in India, who have done the country proud by always bringing their A game to the pitches. Here is an excerpt from a chapter of…

Editor's note: Straight to Normal: My Life as a Gay Man by Sharif D Rangnekar is one the first autobiography to be written from a LGBTQ perspective. The book depicts the struggles that homosexuals face in urban India. It is a story of self-discovery and courage in face of societal stigma, and even unimaginable violence, as the excerpt below reveals. An excerpt from Straight to Normal: My Life as a Gay Man As I freed myself a bit, I started hosting parties too. I would cook, arrange inexpensive alcohol and soft…

Editor's note: Martin Moore book, Democracy Hacked, shows us how democracies across the world are mutating and during the election cycles, how various governments and elites are using social media as the new political battlefield. Moore, who is the director of the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power, and a Senior Research Fellow in the Policy Institute at King’s College London, observes in his book that Facebook, Google, and Twitter - where political dialogues now takes place - have lost control of how…

Editor's Note: Saba Naqvi's 'Politics of Jugaad' asks some of the most important questions in this election season. Examining the history of coalition governments in India, Naqvi tries to understand the strengths and pitfalls of such governments. While coalition governments often tend to be 'unstable', Naqvi analyses if coalition governments are a better bet for a country as diverse as India. Here's an excerpt from the book: The narrative trotted out by many in the mainstream media today makes coalitions…

Editor's Note: But You Don't Look Like A Muslim is a collection of essays by writer, critic and literary historian, Rakhshanda Jalil. Through these essays, Jalil interrogates religious identity and tries to understand how the interplay of culture, traditions and most importantly faith moulds an individual, as well as their perceived identity by the society. Jalil blends personal anecdotes beautifully to address larger and important questions about the perception of religious identities in pluralistic and culturally…

Editor's Note: The book, For The Love of God: Women Poet Saints of the Bhakti Movement written by Sandhya Mulchandani sheds light on how women in India, between 3rd Century BC and AD, boycotted the patriarchal norms and customs of the society to embrace the Bhakti Movement. Regardless of what social backgrounds they came from -- prostitutes, Rajputs, Brahmins, and Sudras -- many women came forth to claim their place in this religious movement, which did not discriminate on the basis of gender. They freed themselves from…

Editor's Note: The excerpt below has been taken from the chapter The New Credo of Hindutva, of the book, Savarkar: The true story of the father of Hindutva written by senior Times journalist and historian, Vaibhav Purandare. Savarkar had entered the Cellular Jail a passionate promoter of Hindu–Muslim amity, having, among other things, lavished fulsome praise on the Muslim heroes of 1857 such as Awadh ruler Wajid Ali and Rohilkhand rebel chieftain Khan Bahadur Khan. But he came out of prison driven by a desire to…