Advs #5 HOT NEW RELEASES IN BOOKS TO BUY ON AMAZON
1. Right between the ears: How to Use Brain Science to Build Epic Brands
Author: Sandeep Dayal
Publisher: Penguin Portfolio
Print length: 256 pages
Release date: 21 June 2021
Price: ₹389.00
Review
Your brand is what peoples' brains make of it. Right Between the Ears lays out an entirely new approach, based on years of development and real-world testing, that Dayal calls Cognitive Branding, for designing and building epic brands. He uses the theories of behavioural science to understand how to successfully market a brand, and has used his concept of 'cognitive branding' with top brands like Kraft, Phillips, Unilever and Mastercard to name just a few. That coding and decoding, the mantra for how to make connections in the brain that drive consumers to buy the chosen brands, is the Holy Grail that marketers seek, and Right Between the Ears delivers just that.
About the Author
Sandeep Dayal is a seasoned marketing and strategy leader, with twenty-plus years of experience across industries. In addition to serving as the managing director, Sandeep heads the firm's Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Practice wing. He serves as a counsellor to C-suite executives and board members at Fortune 500 companies. He has served fifty-plus clients in over 100 engagements around the world (including fifteen-plus major countries in the EU, Latin America and Asia). He is regarded as one of the leading minds in marketing strategy and has coauthored articles in Marketing Management, McKinsey Quarterly and Strategy & Business.
2. Trans : When Ideology Meets Reality
Author: Helen Joyce
Publisher: Oneworld
Print length: 320 pages
Release date: 30 July 2021
Price: ₹324.00
Review
Gender self-identification is often described as this generation’s civil-rights battle. And it is promoted by some of the same organisations that fought for women’s suffrage, desegregation in the American South and gay marriage. But, demanding that self-declared gender identity be allowed to override sex is not, as with civil-rights movements, about extending privileges unjustly hoarded by a favoured group to a marginalised one. Most people are in the dark about what is being demanded by transactivists. They understand the call for “trans rights” to mean compassionate concessions that enable a suffering minority to live full lives, in safety and dignity. I, alongside every critic of gender-identity ideology I have spoken to for this book, am right behind this. Most, including me, also favour bodily autonomy for adults. A liberal, secular society can accommodate many subjective belief systems, even mutually contradictory ones. What it must never do is impose one group’s beliefs on everyone else.'
About the Author
Helen Joyce is a senior staff journalist at The Economist, where she has worked for 15 years. Since becoming interested in gender identity issues, she has written a number of articles and editorials on the topic for The Economist and other outlets.
3. City of Shadows: Slums and Informal Work in Bangalore
Author: Supriya Roy Chowdhury
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print length: 200 pages
Release date: 30 September 2021
Price: ₹684.00
Review
Alongside debates over rising inequalities, the stubbornness of urban poverty, globally, has emerged as a major academic and policy concern. Urban poverty policy positions are typically framed by paradigms of basic services and welfare. In the backdrop of Bangalore's evolution into India's silicon valley, the book presents research spanning old, inner city slums, new migrant settlements in urban peripheries, slum development projects, and garment export and construction workers, highlighting that intergenerationally, the urban poor remain tied to traditional low paying occupations, or, get incorporated into new urban growth channels (export industries, low end services) under highly unfavourable terms and conditions. Using the concepts of the old and the new poor, to explore channels of inclusion and exclusion, the book underscores that the poor's vulnerabilities are defined by different regimes of informality. Debates on the urban poor's political agency are used to problematize informality's complex relationship to contemporary theories of class
About the Author
Supriya Roy Chowdhury is currently Visiting Professor with the Urban and Mobility Studies Program at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru. She was earlier Professor of Political Science at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru.
4. The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (Bridging the Gap)
Author: Rush Doshi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Print length: 430 pages
Release date: 11 June 2021
Price: ₹308.05
Review
"The Long Game brings what's been largely missing from debate on US-China relations: historically informed insight into the nature of China's Leninist system and strategy." -Kevin Rudd, President of the Asia Society and former Prime Minister of Australia
"The Long Game is essential in understanding China's approach to the evolving US-China relationship and global order. Unique in scope and unmatched in substance, Rush Doshi's masterfully researched work describes clearly the economic, political, and military contours of China's strategic approach. The observations, analysis, and recommendations of this superb work must be foundational to any China playbook-business, political, or military." -Admiral Gary Roughead, U.S. Navy (Retired)
"Using primary sources and crisp analysis, Rush Doshi decodes Beijing's grand strategy of the last three decades. In the process, he exposes the threadbare assumptions that caused countless American policymakers, intelligence analysts, and scholars to misjudge the intentions and capacities of China's rulers. Wishful thinkers, isolationists, and accommodationists will marshal no credible counterarguments to the central findings of this superb book." -Matt Pottinger, Former Deputy National Security Advisor
"'What does China want?' Rush Doshi makes such a cogent case, based on a wealth of Chinese textual and behavioral evidence, that China's consistent strategy has been to displace the United States that he persuades me to re-examine my view that China's aims are open-ended and malleable. His compelling book should become an instant classic in the China field and required reading for everyone trying to figure out America's own best strategy toward China." -Susan Shirk, Professor and Chair of the 21st Century China Center, University of California-San Diego
About the Author
Rush Doshi is Director of the Brookings China Strategy Initiative and a Fellow in Brookings Foreign Policy. He is also a Fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center, Special Advisor to the CEO of the Asia Group, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and an intelligence officer in the US Navy Reserve. Dr. Doshi was a member of the Asia Policy Working Group for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, an analyst at the Long Term Strategy Group and Rock Creek Global Advisors, an Arthur Liman Fellow at the Department of State, and a Fulbright Fellow in China. His research has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, International Organization, and the Washington Quarterly, among other publications, and he has testified before the US Congress.
5. RAJINIKANTH: A LIFE
Author: Vaasanthi Sundaram
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Print length: 280 pages
Release date: 10 April 2021
Price: ₹525.00
Review
Superstar Rajinikanth defies all conventional analyses—no one has reigned Supreme for as long as he has in the world of Indian cinema. With over 150 films under his belt, many of them blockbusters, he still plays the hero at seventy, and the devotion of his legions of fans has not waned during the forty-odd years of his stardom. In a state that saw the Dravidian self-respect movement propagate atheism, fans worship his cut-outs and bathe them with milk and beer, as if he were their God.
In a society famous for its pride in its language, It is curious that a Kannadiga whose family hails from Maharashtra, an outsider, should emerge as a ‘thalaivar’, or leader. With the death of the charismatic J. Jayalalithaa, a former actor, and M. Karunanidhi, who was a scriptwriter for films—leaders of the AIADMK and DMK respectively (The two main Dravidian political parties that have been ruling Tamil Nadu for more than sixty years)—rajinikanth’s fans believed there was a political vacuum that only he could fill. While the actor has been dabbling in politics, by making pronouncements on certain issues, including jayalalithaa’s policies, the Cauvery water sharing problem between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, bomb attacks in the state and so on, it was only in 2017 that he promised to form his own party and contest all 234 seats in the 2021 assembly elections.
For decades, his fans had been awaiting this moment, believing that he could solve all their problems and give them a life free from strife and governance free of corruption. His fan clubs went into high gear to turn themselves into the foundation of their thalaivar’s political party, attracting more members and working on the ground all over the state. For three years, every utterance of rajinikanth’s was analysed and debated even more vociferously than anything he has said in the past.
Political opponents questioned his experience and pointed out that (even after forty years) he was an outsider who did not understand the undercurrents of Tamil Nadu politics; his detractors criticized the lack of a clear ideology behind his promise of ‘spiritual politics’; political analysts who saw that rajini was close to the BJP anticipated that he might enter into an alliance with them, allowing the right-wing party a foothold in the state. Ultimately, however, the seventy-year-old superstar withdrew from the political arena citing health concerns. The fans were hugely disappointed but understanding. With their continuing support and excitement for the next rajini-starrer, he remains a giant in the field of entertainment. Rajinikanth: a life is the best account yet of the man who was born Shivaji Rao gaekwad—once a Coolie and a bus conductor in Bangalore and now virtually a God in Tamil Nadu.
About the Author
VAASANTHI is a renowned author and journalist who writes in English and Tamil. She has been writing in Tamil for more than forty years and has published thirty novels, six short-story collections, four volumes of journalistic articles, and four travelogues. Her books in English include Cut-outs, Caste and Cine Stars: The World of Tamil Politics, Amma: Jayalalithaa’s Journey from Movie Star to Political Queen, The Lone Empress: A Portrait of Jayalalithaa, and Karunanidhi: The Definitive Biography. She was the Editor of the Tamil edition of India Today for nearly ten years in Chennai. She now works as a freelance writer and journalist and lives in Delhi.
6. The Hunt for Mount Everest
Author: Craig Storti
Publisher: John Murray
Print length: 320 pages
Release date: 30 April 2021
Price: ₹532.00
Review
The height of Mt. Everest was first measured in 1850, but the closest any westerner got to Everest during the next 71 years, until 1921, was 40 miles. The Hunt for Mt. Everest tells the story of the 71-year quest to find the world's highest mountain. It's a tale of high drama, of larger-than-life characters-George Everest, Francis Younghusband, George Mallory, Lord Curzon, Edward Whymper-and a few quiet heroes: Alexander Kellas, the 13th Dalai Lama, Charles Bell.
A story that traverses the Alps, the Himalayas, Nepal and Tibet, the British Empire (especially British India and the Raj), the Anglo-Russian rivalry known as The Great Game, the disastrous First Afghan War, and the phenomenal Survey of India - it is far bigger than simply the tallest mountain in the world. Encountering spies, war, political intrigues, and hundreds of mules, camels, bullocks, yaks, and two zebrules, Craig Storti uncovers the fascinating and still largely overlooked saga of all that led up to that moment in late June of 1921 when two English climbers, George Mallory and Guy Bullock, became the first westerners-and almost certainly the first human beings-to set foot on Mt. Everest and thereby claimed the last remaining major prize in the history of exploration.
With 2021 bringing the 100th anniversary of that year, most Everest chronicles have dealt with the climbing history of the mountain, with all that happened after 1921. The Hunt for Mt. Everest is the seldom-told story of all that happened before.
About the Author
Craig Storti is founder and co-director of Communicating Across Cultures, a Washington DC-based intercultural communication training and consulting firm. With work appearing in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, he is the author of six books. Having lived nearly a quarter of his life abroad, he lives now in Maryland.
7. China Room: A must-read novel on love, oppression, and freedom
Author: Sunjeev Sahota
Publisher: Penguin Hamish Hamilton
Print length: 256 pages
Release date: 24 May 2021
Price: ₹381.00
Review
A multigenerational novel of love, oppression, trauma and the pursuit of freedom, inspired in part by the author's own family history, China Room twines together the stories of a woman and a man separated by more than half a century but united by blood.
Mehar, a young bride in the rural Punjab of 1929, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. She and her sisters-in-law, married to three brothers in a single ceremony, spend their days hard at work in the family's 'china room', sequestered from contact with the men. When Mehar develops a theory as to which of them is hers, a passion is ignited that puts more than one life at risk.
Spiralling around Mehar's story is that of a young man who, in 1999, travels from England to the now-deserted farm, its 'china room' locked and barred. In enforced flight from the traumas of his adolescence-his experiences of addiction, racism and estrangement from the culture of his birth-he spends a summer in painful contemplation and recovery, before finally finding the strength to return home.
1. This book is for all fiction lovers, especially historical fiction set in India.
2. Sunjeev Sahota was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and won the Encore Prize, the European Union Prize for Literature and the South Bank Sky Arts Award. He was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 2013.
3. The book's deals with the themes of oppression, women's lives in India, arranged marriages, identity and freedom.
4. Sunjeev Sahota's previous works include Ours Are the Streets and The Year of the Runaways.
About the Author
Sunjeev Sahota is the author of Ours Are the Streets and The Year of the Runaways, which was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and won the Encore Prize, the European Union Prize for Literature, and the South Bank Sky Arts Award. He was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 2013. He lives in Sheffield.
8. The Sweetness of Water: 'Better than any debut novel has a right to be' Richard Russo
Author: Nathan Harris
Publisher: Tinder Press
Print length: 368 pages
Release date: 15 June 2021
Price: ₹802.00
Review
In the dying days of the American Civil War, newly freed brothers Landry and Prentiss find themselves cast into the world without a penny to their names. Forced to hide out in the woods near their former Georgia plantation, they're soon discovered by the land's owner, George Walker, a man still reeling from the loss of his son in the war.
When the brothers begin to live and work on George's farm, the tentative bonds of trust and union begin to blossom between the strangers. But this sanctuary survives on a knife's edge, and it isn't long before the inhabitants of the nearby town of Old Ox react with fury at the alliances being formed only a few miles away . . .
About the Author
Nathan Harris is a Michener fellow at the University of Texas. He was awarded the Kidd prize, as judged by Anthony Doerr, and was also a finalist for the Tennessee Williams fiction prize. THE SWEETNESS OF WATER is his debut novel. He lives in Austin, Texas.
9. Fatal Mistakes
Author: Vedashree Khambete-Sharma
Publisher: Harper Black
Print length: 252 pages
Release date: 6 August 2021
Price: ₹194.00
Review
Mysterious, coded text messages.
A plea for help from an anonymous sender.
And... nothing else. That's it.
Now, let's play Da-Vinci-Code-Da-Vinci-Code.
This is what Mumbai Daily reporter Avantika Pandit wants: To cover crime. To not be a feature writer. To never have to write another listicle in her life. Ever. This is what she actually has: One enraged editor. One garbage assignment (literally). And a bunch of mysterious texts that hint at deadly, hidden crimes, which she absolutely, positively shouldn't be digging into.
Oh, well.
Can she unearth the truth, without pissing off her boss - even more? Can she brave Dhruv Juneja's incessant flirting? Will she finally cross over to the hallowed ground of crime reporting, preferably with all her limbs intact?
Or will she discover, that all it really takes to end up begging for your life, is one fatal mistake?
About the Author
Vedashree Khambete-Sharma is an award-winning ad-woman. Before that, she was a freelance reporter for several newspapers and wrote on a wide range of subjects from student suicides to types of boyfriends. She lives in Mumbai with her husband, daughter and the niggling feeling that she has forgotten something.
10. The Jamun Tree and Other Stories
Author: Richa Gupta
Publisher: Bridging Borders
Print length: 304 pages
Release date: 26 July 2021
Price: ₹299.00
Review
‘Our daily life provides rich soil for a fertile imagination to sprout tales of mystery, delight, sorrow and awe.’ - Richa Gupta The Jamun Tree and Other Stories is a collection of short stories dissects and analyses a cross section of society to decipher our complex existence, psychological truths, range of emotions, relationships and subjective morality. The stories in this collection are about an almost-human Jamun tree, an enticing woman on a mission, a family receiving news about their inheritance, a journalist looking for a scoop, a family on a cruise liner, a mother dealing with the tragic death of her child, youngsters affected by corruption and an investigator resolving a mysterious murder. The Jamun Tree and Other Stories will help navigate and open up vistas to understand our present-day life.
About the Author
Rocha Gupta lives in New Delhi, India. After an academic and professional career, she has devoted herself to creative writing since 2017 and has published four books.
11. VIDEO MARIAMMAN AND OTHER STORIES
Author: Imayam (Author), Padma Narayanan (Translator)
Publisher: Speaking Tiger
Print length: 320 pages
Release date: 15 July 2021
Price: ₹350.00
Review
The acclaimed Tamil writer I may am has written about the brutal complexities of the caste system and patriarchy in unadorned, powerful prose. Video mariamman is a collection of fourteen of his finest stories poonkothai goes looking for her daughter who has eloped with a ‘low-caste’ man, hoping to give the daughter her Certificates and some money so that she can lead a decent life.
The ‘stolen girl’, born into a family of black magicians and abducted when she had barely reached puberty, grows up to be a tough survivor who lives life entirely on her own terms. Srinivasan, a police Constable, tormented after being a pallbearer for a Dalit corpse and horrified by its implications for his social status, decides to quit his job. Chandravadanam, a music prodigy, dies, and kalaiammal, who brought her up without ever entering her house, mourns her death and curses the man for whom she gave up her youth and music. .
In these and ten other stories—translated by Padma Narayanan with great skill and sensitivity proves why he has been hailed as a writer with few equals anywhere, for his deep humanism and fierce sense of justice
About the Author
Imayam is the pen name of V. Annamalai, a schoolteacher and writer in Tamil, who has published six novels. He has won several prestigious awards, including the Agni Akshara Award (1994), Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers’ Association Award (1994), Amuthan Adigal Award for Literature (1998) and Iyal Lifetime Achievement Award (2018).
12. The Wise Woman and Other Stories: The Best of Mannu Bhandari
Publisher: Roli Books
Print length: 260 pages
Release date: 15 May 2021
Price: ₹316.00
Review
Mannu bhandari’s genius lies not in elevating women to heroines or superior beings; rather, she forces us to acknowledge that flawed, confused, and self-centered women are as worthy of agency and respect. She wrote among literary giants who were mostly men, but carved a singular space for herself with her unflinching gaze at the hypocrisy of a society that claims to venerate women yet balks at giving them the keys to their shackles. These 18 stories are representative of her wonderful insights into the inner life of women – her characters span the spectrum from rural to urban, illiterate to educated, homemakers to career professionals. Through all the stories runs a vein of gentle mockery – The inimitable Mannu bhandari style.
About the Author
Born in Madhya Pradesh in 1931, Mannu Bhandari had her early education in Ajmer, graduated from Calcutta University and then went on to obtain an M.A. in Hindi language and literature from Banaras Hindu University. She initially worked as a lecturer in Hindi in Calcutta, and subsequently taught Hindi literature at Miranda House College, in the University of Delhi. A prolific writer of short stories, novels, novellas, and plays, Mannu Bhandari has been honoured with several awards for her outstanding literary achievements in Hindi. She is considered one of the pioneers of the ‘Nayi Kahani’ Movement, a Hindi literary movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her work has been translated into many Indian and foreign languages. Some of her stories have been adapted into films as well as for the stage. The Hindi movie Rajnigandha, based on her short story ‘Yehi Sach Hai’ won the Filmfare Best Film Award in 1974.
Vidya Pradhan is a writer based in Palo Alto, California. She has written several children’s books, features, and a memoir. This is her first translation and she looks forward to bringing more classic Indian literature in Hindi to English readers.
13. Space and Beyond: Professional Voyage of K. Kasturirangan
Author: B. N. Suresh (Editor)
Publisher: Springer
Print length: 695 pages
Release date: 17 April 2021
Price: ₹2,279.99
Review
This book discusses the journey of Dr. K Kasturirangan, who shares his experience during his long tenure at ISRO including the Chairmanship of ISRO, subsequently membership of the Rajya Sabha, the Planning Commission and many other responsibilities. Over the past five decades of public and professional service to the nation, Dr. Kasturirangan has graduated from a young researcher in astrophysics working under Vikram Sarabhai to leading India’s space program (ISRO), being entrusted by five successive Prime Ministers, besides dealing with several other domains of responsibilities beyond space, all of which have significantly impacted India’s development.
This book centers around select 12 public invited lectures, Dr. Kasturirangan delivered ranging from developing hi-tech space systems, to managing an organization as intricate as ISRO which was guided by the wisdom of mentors, including Vikram Sarabhai, M G K Menon, Satish Dhawan and U. R. Rao, to tackling multi-faceted socio-economic issues, including India’s nuclear deal, report headed by him on the Western Ghats ecosystem, and the new National Education Policy 2020.
Scientists, historians, policy makers, management strategists, journalists, or anyone with a keen interest in understanding the processes behind such large-scale science, technology and socio-economic endeavors – right from planning, creating appropriate institutional mechanisms, working with multiple stakeholders to ensure that these programs deliver tangible benefits to society, articulating these benefits with clarity to political leaders to assure public support – will find this book deeply instructive and illuminating. It will be of interest to the scientific, education and management community as well as to policy makers and researchers affiliated with multifaceted developmental issues.
About the Author
Dr. B. N. Suresh is the Chancellor of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Thiruvananthapuram, and an honorary distinguished professor at ISRO, Bangalore. He was also the president of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE). After his degree in science and engineering from Mysore University, Dr. Suresh earned his post graduate degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. He has to his credit several contributions to engineering sciences, particularly in the area of aerospace, for design and development of different versions of launch vehicles. He has provided dynamic leadership for the successful launches of the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV), Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV). His major contributions have been in the development of the inertial guidance system for all of the launch vehicles of ISRO, advanced launch vehicles (like GSLV MK-3), reusable launch vehicle technology demonstrators, and air-breathing propulsion. One of his significant achievements has been to define and implement the complex Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SCRE), involving the development of several new technologies and achieving successful flight tests. He is a fellow of several professional bodies, such as the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) in Delhi, Indian National Science Academy (INSA) in Delhi, member of International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), among others. Dr. Suresh has won several awards and honors such as the Padma Shree (2012) and Padma Bhushan (2013), the highest Indian civilian awards. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Very nice books 🙂
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