<p style="margin: 6px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 24px;"><font color="#333333" face="Open Sans, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 15px;">‘A stalwart Congressman symbolizing the party’s foundational values’ – SONIA GANDHI</span></font></p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 24px;"><font color="#333333" face="Open Sans, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 15px;">‘Sushilkumar embodies Lord Krishna’s mantra on how to address a challenging situation: He who responds to every situation with a smile and never reacts with anger is the one who wins”.’ – SHARAD PAWAR</span></font></p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 24px;"><font color="#333333" face="Open Sans, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Veteran politician Sushilkumar Shinde’s career trajectory is unrivalled in Indian politics. Beginning life working as a child labourer and as a ward boy to make ends meet, he went on to hold some of the highest offices in the land: the chief minister of Maharashtra, the Union home minister, All India Congress Committee general secretary and the UPA’s vice-presidential candidate. In this candid memoir written with Rasheed Kidwai, he takes us though the highs and lows of his fifty-year-long political journey: from being ‘discovered’ by Sharad Pawar and fighting his first few elections to his subsequent rise to the pinnacles of power.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 24px;"><font color="#333333" face="Open Sans, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Shinde’s tenure as Union home minister saw, among other things, the controversial trials and executions of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru, the 2012 Delhi gangrape case and an investigation of ‘Hindu terror’ groups. Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated into two states under his watch as governor. He gives us a behind-the-scenes view of these significant events and also sheds light on what went wrong with the Manmohan Singh-led UPA II government and why the Congress-led coalition lost to the BJP-led NDA in 2014.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 6px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 24px;"><font color="#333333" face="Open Sans, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Referring to the many challenges Sushilkumar Shinde confronted and overcame in his long career, President Pranab Mukherjee once said, ‘His [Shinde’s] story is the story of India.’ Five Decades in Politics, Shinde’s memoir, makes for fascinating reading, and the tale it tells will be an inspiration to many.</span></font></p><div><br></div>

<p>For the first time, Pope Francis tells the story of his life as he looks back on the momentous world events that have changed history—from his earliest years during the outbreak of World War II in 1939 to the turmoil of today.&nbsp;</p><p>An extraordinary personal and historical journey, Life is the story of a man and a world in dramatic change. Pope Francis recalls his life through memories and observations of the most significant occurrences of the past eight decades. The book opens with three-year-old Jorge in the kitchen with his mother in Argentina as World War II breaks out, and he goes on to witness several historic events:</p><p>the fall of the Berlin Wall Videla’s coup in Argentina the moon landing in 1969 and even the 1986 World Cup in which Maradona scored the unforgettable “hand of God” goal.Here are the frank assessments and intimate insights of a pastor reflecting on the Nazi extermination of the Jews, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 2001 terrorist attack on America and the collapse of the Twin Towers, the great economic recession of 2008, the Covid-19 pandemic, the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI, and the subsequent conclave that elected him Pontiff.</p><p>The “pope callejero” recounts these world-changing moments with the candor and compassion that distinguishes him, and offers important messages on major crises confronting us now, including social inequalities, climate change, international war, atomic weapons, racial discrimination, and the battles over social and cultural issues.</p><p>Translated from the Italian by Aubrey Botsford</p><div><br></div>

<p>Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) is perhaps the most iconised historical figure in India. Born into a caste deemed ‘unfit for human association’, he came to define what it means to be human. How and why did Ambedkar, who revered and cited the Gita till the 1930s, turn against Hinduism? What were his quarrels with Gandhi and Savarkar? Why did he come to see himself as Moses? How did the lessons learnt at Columbia University impact the struggle for water in Mahad in 1927 and the drafting of the Constitution of India in 1950? Having declared in 1935 that he will not die as a Hindu, why did Ambedkar toil on the Hindu Code Bill? What made him a votary of Western individualism and yet put faith in the collective ethical way of life suggested by Buddhism? Why is it wrong to see Ambedkar as an apologist for colonialism? From which streams of thought did Ambedkar brew his philosophies? Who were the thinkers he turned to in his library of fifty thousand books? What did this life of the mind cost him and his intimates? What of his first wife, Ramabai, while he was busy with the chalval?</p><p>A Part Apart is a rigorous effort at both asking questions and answering as many as one can about B.R. Ambedkar. Ashok Gopal undertakes a mission without parallel: reading the bulk of Ambedkar’s writings, speeches and letters in Marathi and English, and what Ambedkar himself would have read. This is the story of the unrelenting toil and struggle that went into the making of Ambedkar legend.</p><div><br></div>