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The Islamic State-A Brief Introduction
How did the Islamic State grow from regional terrorist group to a brutal multinational bureaucratic machine? What are its goals? How can it be stopped? In 2014, the Islamic State seemingly appeared out of nowhere, conquering Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and boldly announcing the establishment of a caliphate that seeks to eliminate all borders in the Middle East and to extend them as far as Central Asia and India. Today, it controls thousands of square miles, is attempting to govern millions of people and has gained notoriety for its indiscriminate and savage be headings. Charles R. Lister, visiting fellow at the Bookings Institution's Doha Center, traces the outfit's growth from the release of its notorious father figure, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, from a Jordanian prison in 1999 and the group's formation in Afghanistan, finally to its stunning maturation in Iraq and Syria more than a decade later. He helps us understand what to expect next and recommends a course of action to defeat the group. This is an excellent primer on an organization that threatens to unseat the al-Qaeda as the leader of transnational jihadism, not to mention the risk it poses to global security.
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The Colaba Conspiracy
Jeet Singhs ex-girlfriend Sushmitas rich industrialist husband is brutally stabbed to death. Her stepchildren destroy all evidence of her marriage to their slain father and implicate her in the case along with Jeet Singh. Known to be able to open any safe in the country, Jeet Singh takes it upon himself to clear their names and solve the murder mystery. Voted the most popular book of 2014 in Indian Writing , Colaba Conspiracy is a whodunit that will keep you guessing all the way.
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Modi's World-Expanding India's Sphere Of Influence
Modi's World tells the story of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vigorous diplomacy and his aspiration to elevate India's place in the world. It offers insights into Modi's foreign policy inheritance, his efforts to build on the foundations laid by his recent predecessors, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, and set more ambitious international goals of his own for India. The book, based on Raja Mohan's columns for the Express, examines the new opportunities that Modi's energy and intensity have generated for India's relations with the major powers and its neighbours in the subcontinent, Asia and the Indian Ocean. Raja Mohan reviews India's new initiatives under Modi to put diplomacy at the service of economic development, deepen the ties with the diaspora, and develop a new vocabulary for Indian foreign policy. He takes a close look at Modi's attempts to end Delhi's defensiveness on the world stage, inject greater flexibility into India's positions on trade and climate change, discard past slogans like non-alignment, and construct a new framework of pragmatic internationalism. At the same time, Raja Mohan takes a critical look at some of the domestic constraints that could limit Modi's ambition to make India a 'leading power' in the world. Crisply argued and written, Modi's World provides the reader a sharp focus on an area of intense activity.
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Rain On The Dead
It begins with the attempted assassination of the ex-President of the United States. Only the presence of Sean Dillon and the fellow members of the Prime Ministers Private Army prevents it becoming a bloodbath. Soon they are on the trail of the perpetrators, confident they will catch them. What Dillon & Co dont realize is that they have just sprung a trap that will lead them to almost certain death. For there is a new master pulling the strings for al Qaeda in London and this time hes going to make sure the hated enemy is destroyed once and for all. A storm is coming for Sean Dillon
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Parricide
Childhood, as Ravi remembers it, was a seemingly endless period of pain and abuse suffered at the hands of his father. Now, despite being a twenty-something living in a different city, memories of those days - the rage, the beatings and the hatred - continue to torment him. Until the day he is summoned to his dying father's bedside a story of one man's journey from hatred towards empathy, Parricide is about the choices we make and the price we must pay for even partial resolutions.
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Spirit Animals-Tales Of The Great Animals
Dive, run and soar through this exhilarating special edition, a story by Wild Born author, Brandon Mull. Briggan the Wolf, Uraza the Leopard, Jhi the Panda and Essix the Falcon - the Four Fallen. Long before they were spirit animals, they roamed the wilds as Great Beasts, the most powerful beings in Erdas. When a mad king arose, the four banded together with an army of humans and animals to defeat him. But they weren't the only Great Beasts in the war. A deadly scheme was already underway, hatched by two of their own. To save their world, the four had to give up their lives. These are the lost stories of the most selfless acts of bravery that Erdas has ever seen and the secret betrayal that started it all. These are Tales of the Great Beasts.
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Directors' Diaries
Director - The invisible, omnipotent presence in cinema, a word that holds spaces inaccessible to most people. In Directors Diaries, Rakesh Bakshi demystifies that figure through the voices of twelve of the most iconic film-makers of our time. In doing so, he happens upon the greater questions of destiny and chance and how sometimes random encounters end up determining the course of a persons life. Bakshis interviews turn into deep and intimate conversations - Imtiaz Alis trans formative experience as a reader during summer vacations, locked in a room, Govind Nihalanis visits with his father to temples in Udaipur, which influenced him as a cinematographer and filmmaker, Ashutosh Gowarikers disappointment at faring poorly in his board exams and being forced give up his dream to study architecture, which led him to seek avenues in theatre, folk dance, group singing, elocution contests in college, eventually leading him to cinema. Farah Khans passion for dance as a child and how she stopped dancing for almost fourteen years because her father did not like it and began doing so only after he passed away. How cinema became Subhash Ghais great escape, whenever his parents argued, he would run away to watch a film. How Vishal Bhardwaj composed his history lessons as songs so he could memorize them and how he accompanied his friend on the harmonium at food festivals in Pragati Maidan to earn a livelihood. An invaluable record of Hindi cinemas old and new voices and a study of the changing face of it, Directors Diaries is also an inspiring account of people battling great odds to achieve their dreams.
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The Heat And Dust Project
Living in a sunny barsati in south Delhi, Saurav Jha and Devapriya Roy are your average DINK couple, about to acquire a few EMIs and come of age in the modern consumerist world. Only, they don't. They junk the swivel chairs, gain a couple of backpacks and set out on a transformational journey across India. On a very, very tight budget - 500 rupees a day for bed and board. And The Heat and Dust Project begins. Joining the ranks of firang gap-year kids and Israeli boys and girls fresh out of compulsory army service, they travel across a whacky, whimsical land, where five thousand years of Indian history seem to jostle side by side. It is, by turns, holy and hectic, thuggish and comic, amoral and endearing. In buses that hurtle through the darkness of the night and the heat of the day, across thousands of miles, in ever new places, the richness of this crowded palette spills over into their lives. From rooms-by-the-hour to strange dinner invitations and spectacular forts and tantrums, this is a tale of the hysterical searching of youth, of eccentric choices and the supreme test of marriage.
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Karachi Raj
And how is one to extract Karachi from oneself? The city gathers wanderers and dreamers into its bosom, contradictory, impenetrable, endlessly jostling its subjects to make room for new ones. And in this city of subterranean terrors and surprising bouts of goodness, a brother and a sister grow into their own. Seema and Hafiz, born into a Basti, long to make something of themselves. But when Seema wins a scholarship to attend university, she finds that social barriers are not easily defied and when Hafiz finds himself smitten by a coworker's wife, he learns of the mutability of love and friendship. Meanwhile, Claire, an American anthropologist, discovers that while her professional training will only take her so far in her quest to unravel Karachi, living in the Basti is an education in itself. Anis Shivani's debut novel is an ambitious work that aches with intimacy even as it encompasses an entire generation into its bold, panoramic vision. Karachi Raj is the sort of book that will shape our understanding of urban Pakistan for years to come.
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37 Bridges And Other Stories
Lucid, lyrical and frequently humorous, this exciting new collection of Hussein's stories range from the experimental approach of 'the man from Beni Mora' and 'the tree at the limit' or more mellow explorations of legends of love and loss in 'the Swan's wife', to the rambling conversations of two Karachi veterans lunching by the sea while their city rains down on them in 'two old friends'. This collection is testimony to the attributes which make him one of our leading exponents of the art of the short story.
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The Reengineers
Chinmay Narayan is plotting to kill himself. He is a misfit at school, his parents are about to divorce and the love of his life doesn't know he exists. But before he can get anywhere with the suicide plan, Chinmay and his friends, Anu and Sabi, stumble into the eerie world of Conchpore through a portal in uncle R. K.'s library. They find themselves in the seeker's school, where you can buy spiritual courses to bring you enlightenment. While the seekers seem unaware that there is something amiss, Chinmay and his friends chance upon a strange and sinister plot involving some teachers and administrators. The charismatic Siddharth, a visiting former student of the school, seems like their one big hope. Then Chinmay discovers that Siddharth is seeking catharsis from his dark past by writing a book - a book with Chinmay as the protagonist. Is Siddharth part of the evil caucus? Will the three youngsters find their way back to the world they left behind? Can Chinmay become the author of his own life? Set in Madras in the early 1990s, the reengineers dispels the boundaries between fiction and reality to tell a tale that is as much a coming of - age story as it is an inspiring narrative about self - empowerment and spiritual growth.
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Hadal
Taking a break from her job in Maldives, young, attractive and unhappily married Miriam lands in Trivandrum, with the idea of writing a novel. Honey Kumar is a police officer in charge of visa extension, on a punishment transfer from Delhi to Trivandrum for graft. Miriam wants to extend her visa. Honey Kumar demands sex in return. When Miriam refuses to comply, he fabricates an espionage charge against her. That Miriam is sleeping with Paul Roy, director of the Indian Space Research Centre, renders Honey Kumar's job of trapping her easier. Inspired by a true - life incident, this is an incisive critique of the rot at the heart of India and the corruption, physical and spiritual, that permeates the structures of authority and how that deep institutional breakdown impacts individual lives.
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Money Wise- The Aam Aadmi's Guide To Wealth and Fi
Do you obsess about money and yet not talk about it with parents or friends and barely enough with the spouse? Do you worry about how much you have, how much you need, what you need to do to get more of it? The world of money is bewildering. The biggest investment you will ever make is towards your financial education and this easy-to-read guide provides just that. It answers vital questions such as - Where does money come from? Why do prices go up every year? How do I get out of debt? Should i invest in the stock market? What is the value of gold in our financial system? How do i make my investment portfolio shock-proof? Practical, fun and straight to the point, Money Wise will equip you with the tools to manage your money with confidence and competence.
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Written In Tears
Mainao and Alfred are forced to leave their village for Delhi in search of employment. Ill-adjusted to city life, they return to their village only to find their house burnt down and family destroyed by Bodo militants. A half - burnt bus passes through a city charring everything beautiful and alive in its wake. Arunima, the new bride, looks forward to joining the large, loving family of her husband, but is unaware of the trouble her insurgent brother-in-law's absence from home is going to bring. Ayengla lives happily with her husband, working in her fields and secretly supplying food to the insurgents until one day a horrible act of violence changes her life irrevocably. Arupa Patangia Kalita's writings chronicle the disturbing history of aggression and hate that has plagued Assam, her homeland, for many decades.
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Behind A Billion Screens
What is happening to India's television industry? How is it adapting to the rapid changes in the country? And what does India's television programming tell us about the state of the nation? Television touches almost everyone. It is rapidly expanding and becoming socially ever-more powerful, but is simultaneously facing a crisis of credibility. In Behind a Billion Screens, Nalin Mehta looks closely at how television works in India, how TV channels make their money or not and what this means for the cacophony that appears on our screens. Given that television is a strategically vital social gateway for power, he also probes the ownership of television networks politicians, corporations, real-estate tycoons and tells us why this matters. Based on extensive research and wide-ranging conversations with industry leaders, channel heads, policy makers and politicians, this is a comprehensive report on the state of the Indian television industry, how it is shape shifting in response to the ferment of mobiles and social media and its vital role in the wider Indian story. Everybody watches television, everybody has an opinion on it and everybody claims to have solutions, but Mehta brings new research and understanding to illuminate a topic that often raises a lot of heat and smoke but little light.
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The 13th Disciple
The New York Times bestselling author of Buddha and Jesus weaves together masterful storytelling, historical narrative, mystery and intrigue, to reveal surprising discoveries about the unknown last disciple of Christ, offering a new understanding of who Jesus really was in his final days. A missing nun, a distressed young woman who wants to take back an obituary from the local newspaper and a solid gold reliquary missing from a church in Belgium that suddenly resurfaces in America. These are the ingredients that set off Deepak Chopra's new novel, The 13th Disciple. When a young newspaper man begins to investigate the lost reliquary, at first it seems like another case of a treasure stolen during the chaos of World War II. But it soon becomes apparent that much more is at stake. Inside the medieval reliquary is a sacred relic - a single finger bone - from an anonymous saint. Why should an anonymous person's remains be considered holy? It turns out that a secret is hidden inside the gold box and a small band of people know what it is - by touching the reliquary, they have received mental images and sometimes verbal messages. These point to a figure far more remote than the Middle Ages. It's a young girl who had a chance encounter with Jesus just before he was crucified. The few people who have had visions of her have banded together as a mystery school, a closed society who preserve sacred wisdom so that it won't be lost. As The 13th Disciple unfolds, we discover that the secrets inside the reliquary are at once fascinating and controversial, because the young girl went on a quest to discover who Jesus really was and the answers she came up with are at times far different from the accepted gospels. Did she become the last and truest disciple of Christ?
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In Search Of Freedom
In search of freedom is a journey through India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Burma searching for the forgotten freedom fighters of India. Sagari Chhabra's travels across these regions and her encounters, reveal what it means to be oppressed and what true freedom implies. Both personal and political, historical and contemporary, the author's intrepid excursions across the region and extraordinary interviews provide a valuable account of what it was to fight for the freedom of India and yet to remain largely in oblivion.
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ISIS- The State Of Terror
Drawing on their unusual access to intelligence sources and material, law enforcement, and groundbreaking research into open source intelligence, Jessica Stern and J M Berger outline the origins of ISIS (known variously as ISIL and IS) as the formidable terrorist group it has quickly become.ISIS: The State of Terror delves into the ghoulish pornography of pro-jihadi videos, the seductive appeal of jihadi chic and the startling effectiveness of the Islamic States use of social media as a means of luring and recruiting citizens from countries such as the United States, Great Britain, and Franceusing recent examples such as Douglas McCain, the American citizen from Minnesota who joined ISIS and died in combat fighting on the side of the Islamic State. Although the picture Stern and Berger paint is bleak, State of Terror also offers well-informed thoughts on potential government responses to ISIS most importantly, emphasizing that we must alter our present conceptions of terrorism and react to the rapidly changing jihadi landscape, both online and off, as quickly as the terrorists do.ISIS: The State of Terror is not only a compelling account of the evolution of a terrorist organization, but also a necessary book that attempts to answer the question of what our next move as a country, as a government, as the world should be.
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Strategy Rules
Between 1968 and 1976, Bill Gates, Andy Grove and Steve Jobs, founded three companies that would define the world of technology and redefine our personal and business lives for the next half-century. At their peaks, their three companies - Microsoft, Apple and Intel were collectively worth some $1.5 trillion. While much has been written about these individuals and their companies, this book examines these three individuals collectively, for the first time, revealing the business strategies and practices they pioneered while building their firms. Examining both successes and failures, commonalities and differences, this book will appeal to entrepreneurs and executives in all sectors and industries. In Strategy Rules, readers will discover that Gates, Grove and Jobs approached strategy and execution in remarkably similar ways and yet markedly differently from so many of their erstwhile competitors by keeping their focus on five most strategic principles
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Great Soul- Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggle With I
A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments-his success in seizing India's imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country's minorities, outcasts and rural poor. Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph Lelyveld shows in vivid, unmatched detail how Gandhi's sense of mission, social values and philosophy of non-violent resistance were shaped on another subcontinent - during two decades in South Africa - and then tested by an India that quickly learned to revere him as a Mahatma, or "Great Soul", while following him only a small part of the way to the social transformation he envisioned. The man himself emerges as one of history's most remarkable self-creations, a prosperous lawyer who became an ascetic in a loincloth wholly dedicated to political and social action. Lelyveld leads us step-by-step through the heroic - and tragic - last months of this selfless leader's long campaign when his non-violent efforts culminated in the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan and a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing that ended only with his assassination. Here is a vital, brilliant reconsideration of Gandhi's extraordinary struggles on two continents, of his fierce but, finally, unfulfilled hopes and of his ever-evolving legacy, which more than six decades after his death, still ensures that he occupies a key position in India's social conscience and not just India's.
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Smart And Human-Builiding Cities Of Wisdom
The 20th century changed the way we live. Human population went up from 1.5 billion in 1900 to 7 billion in 2010. The hope of a better life drove and continues to drive people to urban areas, leading to the growth of mega-cities around the world. Between 2015 and 2030, India's GDP is expected to multiply five times, with over 70 per cent of new employment generated in cities. Close to 800 million square meters of commercial and residential space needs to be built to serve this population. That is roughly the equivalent of building a new Chicago every year and amounts to over $1.2 trillion in investments. Does India have a new model of urban development to cope? Can the quality of urban life be improved? Can cities become places that promote happiness?Smart and Human argues that these are not unreachable, utopian dreams. The 21st century could change the way we live yet again - A Smart India powered by its Smart Cities.
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The Pearl That Broke Its Shell
Kabul, 2009 - Growing up in a family of with five daughters and no sons, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school and then, as they grow older, can rarely leave the house. Their mother struggles to support the family as their father becomes increasingly addicted to drugs. But one day their aunt, Khala Shaima, makes a suggestion-as a bacha posh, Rahima can dress and be treated as a boy-until she is of marriageable age. She will be able to attend school. It's an old custom, but one that most of society turns a blind eye to when girls are young. And then Khala Shaima begins to tell a story that transforms Rahima's life - the story of her great great-grandmother, Shekiba. Kabul, 1909 - Shekiba, the daughter of a rural farming family, is disfigured in an accident as a child. When her parents and siblings die in a cholera epidemic, she has no one left to support her and is treated as little better than a slave in a relative's home until she is able to escape her life of drudgery by dressing as a man. Through a rare stroke of luck, she becomes one of the guards of the king's harem in a lavish palace in the capital city and eventually manages to make a life for herself one that ultimately includes a husband and children. This is the entwined stories of two Afghan women separated by a century who find freedom in the tradition of bacha posh.
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Wanderers,All
Wanderers, All, by Janhavi Achrekar, is an experimental novel that blends the elements of historical fiction, memoir, and travelogue. It depicts the story of Murlidhar Khedekar, an actor-turned-police-officer whose life is deeply affected by the birth of a new nation. Summary of the Book Set against the background of colonial rule and the foundational years of the Indian police, this book traces the tale of an aspiring actor whose failure to acquire a role in the flourishing Marathi theater scene of the early 1900s leads to a job in the Bombay city police department. Also, his great-granddaughter traces her own kindred through modern Goa and the Konkan regions. The book alternates between the past and the present and blends migration with travel. It delves into themes of divided loyalty, belonging, ownership, borders between humans and nations, and the colonizer and the colonized. About Janhavi Achrekar Janhavi Achrekar is a freelance writer. She has also worked as a journalist, wine-seller, art researcher and curator of literary festivals and advertising copywriter. She has authored Window Seat: Rush hour stories from the city, which is an anthology of short stories. Achrekar has also compiled Moon Mumbai & Goa, the first Indian destination guide in the American travel book series, Moon Handbooks.
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Pluto Poems
Pluto lost its status as a planet only recently. Seeing Pluto sad on being rejected thus, my heart sinks. It is so far away, so tiny, so all my teeny-weeny poems. I gift to it, says Gulzar. In this wonderful collection of short poems, Gulzar addresses his pet themes relationships, God or his absence, nature and the nature of time itself, with characteristic wit and brevity. Beautifully rendered into English by Nirupama Dutt, this is a collection to savour and treasure. About the Author Gulzar is arguably Indias most well-known poet writing in Hindustani today. An acclaimed film-maker, lyricist and author, he is the recipient of a number of Filmfare and National Awards, the Oscar for best lyricist and the Dadasaheb Phalke award. Nirupama Dutt is a poet, journalist, literary and art critic and translator of many seasons. She writes in both Punjabi and English. She received the Punjabi Akademi award for her anthology of poems, Ik Nadi Sanwali Jahi.