Categories: History

The Progressive Maharaja: Sir Madhava Rao's Hints on the Art and Science of Government

₹439.12 M.R.P.:₹ 499.00 You Save: ₹59.88  (12.00% OFF)
<p>"Hints on the Art and Science of Government was the first treatise on statecraft produced in modern India. It consists of lectures that Raja Sir T. Madhava Rao delivered in 1881 to Sayaji Rao Gaekwad III, the young Maharaja of Baroda. Universally considered the foremost Indian statesman of the nineteenth century, Madhava Rao had served as dewan (or prime minister) in the native states of Travancore, Indore and Baroda. Under his command, Travancore and Baroda came to be seen as ‘model states’, whose progress demonstrated that Indians were capable of governing well.</p><p>Rao’s lectures summarise the fundamental principles underlying his unprecedented success. He explains how and why a Maharaja ought to marry the classical Indian ideal of raj dharma, which enjoins rulers to govern dutifully, with the modern English ideal of limited sovereignty. This makes Hints an exceptionally important text: it shows how, outside the confines of British India, Indians consciously and creatively sought to revise and adapt ideals in the interests of progress.</p><p>This landmark edition contains both the newly rediscovered, original lecture manuscripts; and an authoritative introduction, outlining Rao’s remarkable career, his complicated relationship with Sayaji Rao III, and the reasons why his lectures have been neglected-until now."</p>

HITLER, STALIN, MUM AND DAD: A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival

₹728.19 M.R.P.:₹ 899.00 You Save: ₹170.81  (19.00% OFF)
<p>"‘Epic, moving and important’ Robert Harris</p><p>From longstanding political columnist and commentator Daniel Finkelstein, a powerful memoir exploring both his mother and his father’s devastating experiences of persecution, resistance and survival during the Second World War.</p><p>Daniel’s mother Mirjam Wiener was the youngest of three daughters born in Germany to Alfred and Margarete Wiener. Alfred, a decorated hero from the Great War, is now widely acknowledged to have been the first person to recognise the existential danger Hitler posed to the Jews and began, in 1933, to catalogue in detail Nazi crimes. After moving his family to Amsterdam, he relocated his library to London and was preparing to bring over his wife and children when Germany invaded Holland. Before long, the family was rounded up, robbed, humiliated, and sent to Bergen-Belsen.</p><p>Daniel’s father Ludwik was born in Lwow, the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939, after Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland, the family was rounded up by the communists and sent to do hard labour in a Siberian gulag. Working as slave labourers on a collective farm, his father survived the freezing winters in a tiny house they built from cow dung.</p><p>Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad is a deeply moving, personal and at times horrifying memoir about his parents’ experiences at the hands of the two genocidal dictators of the 20th century. It is a story of persecution and survival; and the consequences of totalitarianism told with the almost unimaginable bravery of two ordinary families shining through."</p>

Silk: A History in Three Metamorphoses

₹527.12 M.R.P.:₹ 599.00 You Save: ₹71.88  (12.00% OFF)
<p>Silk, prized for its lightness, luminosity and beauty, is also one of the strongest biological materials ever known. It was used to make the first bulletproof vest more than a century ago, yet science has barely now begun to tap its potential. While the technologies it has inspired – from sutures to pharmaceuticals, replacement body parts to holograms – continue to be developed in laboratories around the world, silk is now emerging as a desperately needed, sustainable alternative to the plastics choking our planet.</p><p>Aarathi Prasad’s Silk is a cultural and biological history from the origins and ancient routes of silk to the story of the biologists who learned the secrets of silk-producing animals, from the moths of China, Indonesia and India to the spiders of South America and Madagascar and the molluscs of the Mediterranean. Because there is more than one kind of silk, there is more than one story of silk.</p><p>Rich in the passionate connections made by women and men of science and the diversity of the animal world, this book is an intoxicating mix of biography, intellectual history and science writing that brings to life the human obsession with silk.</p><p>‘Who would have thought that a book about silkworms and spiders could be so fascinating? Aarathi Prasad criss-crosses centuries and cultures to tell of the intrepid explorers, botanists, scientists and entrepreneurs who were determined to unravel the secrets of silk production. Her book captures their persistence and her own in the search for the little-told but revelatory stories of human curiosity and ingenuity.’</p><p><br></p><p>Clare Hunter, author of Threads of Life</p>

We, the People of the States of Bharat: The Making and Remaking of India's Internal Boundaries

₹527.12 M.R.P.:₹ 599.00 You Save: ₹71.88  (12.00% OFF)
<p>Given that the nine provinces of British India as well as the 562 princely states that existed in August 1947 are not reflected on the map of India in the seventy-fifth year of its independence speaks volumes about the nation’s ability to negotiate its political and administrative boundaries with its citizens. While the process of reimagining India through its constituent units – the states – has, on occasion, been due to administrative requirements, most restructuring in the internal boundaries is marked by the aspirations, assertions and adjustments of linguistic and/or ethnic groups seeking their place in the state and federal polity.</p><p>For Dr Sanjeev Chopra, what started as research into land measurement instruments for revenue records and land settlements eventually became a narrative on mapping state boundaries and a record of the contemporary political history of India through its geography. The book includes captivating material from the reports of the States Reorganization Commission and Linguistic Reorganization Commission, records from state papers as well the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.</p><p>A fascinating read about the multiple boundary adjustments for every state and union territory in India – from 1947 to the seventy-fifth year of independence – We, the People of the States of Bharat is the quintessential story of how India continues to redefine itself.</p>

HITLER'S GIRL

₹701.22 M.R.P.:₹ 899.00 You Save: ₹197.78  (22.00% OFF)
<p>A timely, riveting book that presents for the first time an alternative history of 1930s Britain, revealing how prominent fascist sympathizers nearly succeeded in overturning British democracy—using the past as a road map to navigate the complexities of today’s turn toward authoritarianism.</p><p>Hitler’s Girl is a groundbreaking history that reveals how, in the 1930s, authoritarianism nearly took hold in Great Britain as it did in Italy and Germany. Drawing on recently declassified intelligence files, Lauren Young details the pervasiveness of Nazi sympathies among the British aristocracy, as significant factions of the upper class methodically pursued an actively pro-German agenda. She reveals how these aristocrats formed a murky Fifth Column to Nazi Germany, which depended on the complacence and complicity of the English to topple its proud and long-standing democratic tradition—and very nearly succeeded.</p><p>As she highlights the parallels to our similarly treacherous time, Young exposes the involvement of secret organizations like the Right Club, which counted the Duke of Wellington among its influential members; the Cliveden Set, which ran a shadow foreign policy in support of Hitler; and the shocking four-year affair between socialite Unity Mitford and Adolf Hitler.</p><p>Eye-opening and instructive, Hitler’s Girl re-evaluates 1930s England to help us understand our own vulnerabilities and poses urgent questions we must face to protect our freedom. At what point does complacency become complicity, posing real risk to the democratic norms that we take for granted? Will democracy again succeed—and will it require a similarly cataclysmic event like World War II to ensure its survival? Will we, in our own defining moment, stand up for democratic values—or will we succumb to political extremism?</p>

THE HITLER BLOODLINE

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<p>Adolf Hitler was one of six children born to his mother, and one of eight born to his father from two of his three marriages. Alois Hitler, né Schicklgruber, was an official of the Austrian customs service, and the combination of an imperial uniform and a severe drinking habit seems to have ensured that Hitler's father was a drunken bully given to beating his children if they were not instantly obedient.</p><p>Alois had two children, Alois junior and Angela, by his second wife, and six by his third, Hitler's mother Clara, of whom four, all boys, died at birth or in infancy. Young Adolf was therefore left with a half-brother, Alois, and half-sister, Angela, and a fullsister, Paula, who died in 1960. When Hitler killed himself in April 1945, all his siblings were still living and some had children of their own. So, what happened to them?</p><p>The answer is that no one was really certain until David Gardner published this book in 2001, having patiently and steadfastly tracked down Hitler's living relations to the USA, and made contact with some of them. Now revised and updated, this is a fascinating study of a little-known side of Hitler's history, as well as a riveting account of how the author traced and contacted the survivors of a bloodline that most of the world probably hoped had become extinct.</p>

THE NAZI CONSPIRACY

₹683.24 M.R.P.:₹ 899.00 You Save: ₹215.76  (24.00% OFF)
<p>A major international bestseller.</p><p>The little-known true story of a Nazi plot to kill Winston Churchill, President Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the height of World War II, and how it was averted.&nbsp;</p><p>In 1943 only three men stood in Hitler's way; Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. As the war against Nazi Germany raged, the Allied leaders desperately needed to meet face-to-face and discuss their strategy. Facing extreme danger, they travelled toTehran to meet in secret. Yet when the Nazis found out about the meeting, their own covert plan took shape-an assassination plot.&nbsp;</p><p>A true story filled with daring rescues, body doubles, and political intrigue, The Nazi Conspiracy details this pivotal meeting of the Big Three and the deadly Nazi scheme that could've changed history. In page-turning detail, it shows the greatest political minds of the twentieth century at work and reveals how they strategized to defeat the enemy, all whilst coming close to world-shattering disaster.</p>

Renaissance state

₹389.22 M.R.P.:₹ 499.00 You Save: ₹109.78  (22.00% OFF)
<p><span style="color: rgb(33, 33, 33); font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Maharashtra. Among the country's largest, wealthiest, most significant constituents. A great state in name and in deed that has been the cradle of individuals and events that have shaped India. Girish Kuber - seasoned journalist and one of Maharashtra's foremost opinion makers - tells its story in Renaissance State. Taking in his vast sweep the region's politics, society and history from the time of the Satavahanas down to the present day, he chronicles a number of lesser-known tales: the empire that brought the mighty Mughals to their knees, the woman who took the issue of consent in marital sex right up to Queen Victoria, the social reformers who were far ahead of their time, the evolution of movements of the right and left as well as for Dalit identity, and the long tradition of this great land of always standing up to Delhi. This is the account of the making of Maharashtra that its proud people deserved but had remained unwritten.</span><br></p>

Independence Day: A People's History

₹479.20 M.R.P.:₹ 599.00 You Save: ₹119.80  (20.00% OFF)
<p><span style="color: rgb(15, 17, 17); font-family: &quot;Amazon Ember&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Seventy-five years ago, India attained its independence. What was it like to be an ordinary citizen during that time? How did they celebrate the first Independence Day? What was the atmosphere like on the streets, in cities and towns and faraway villages? How did the people feel? And how do they feel today about the country they witnessed being born? In this extraordinarily moving book, fifteen Indians from across the country tell their stories of their first Independence Day– some were no more than four or five, others, young adults about to enter college. Some lived in far-off places without the newspaper or the radio to give them the news; some had never seen an Englishman and didn’t know what freedom meant.Others lived in fear of communal riots and their lives being destroyed. Here are stories from Bombay and Delhi and Mysore and Lahore, from riot-struck Punjab and Bengal to remote villages in Bihar and Tamil Nadu. These stories, each utterly different, make history come vividly alive, reminding us that behind the facts and the big dates lie the beating hearts of countless Indians who created history together. Deeply inspiring and totally gripping, Independence Day will make 15 August 1947 – and a slice of India’s history – come wholly alive</span><br></p>

Kanpur, 1857

₹399.20 M.R.P.:₹ 499.00 You Save: ₹99.80  (20.00% OFF)
<div aria-expanded="true" class="a-expander-content a-expander-partial-collapse-content a-expander-content-expanded" style="overflow: hidden; position: relative; color: rgb(15, 17, 17); font-family: &quot;Amazon Ember&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; padding-bottom: 20px;">Of all the horrors that blackened the uprising of 1857, none could match the atrocities committed at Kanpur. In Kanpur, 1857 ― part of a new series of books on India’s historic battles ― historian Andrew Ward gives an unblinking account of the siege of the entrenchment into which the European community fled when the town’s four native regiments rebelled, the massacre at the ghat, and the hacking to death of the surviving Europeans. Their slaughter would exacerbate the savage and indiscriminate killings the British were already carrying out, burning villages and condemning thousands of locals to flogging, degradation and the gallows. This richly illustrated field guide draws on decades of research to depict the pitched battles, and the acts of heroism and sacrifice on both sides that were to be subsumed by campaigns of atrocity and terror.</div><div class="a-expander-header a-expander-partial-collapse-header" style="position: absolute; bottom: 0px; width: 401.203px; outline: 0px; color: rgb(15, 17, 17); font-family: &quot;Amazon Ember&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; opacity: 1;"><a data-csa-c-func-deps="aui-da-a-expander-toggle" data-csa-c-type="widget" data-csa-interaction-events="click" aria-expanded="true" role="button" data-action="a-expander-toggle" class="a-declarative" data-a-expander-toggle="{&quot;allowLinkDefault&quot;:true, &quot;expand_prompt&quot;:&quot;Read more&quot;, &quot;collapse_prompt&quot;:&quot;Read less&quot;}" data-csa-c-id="ikk4e5-xty44j-fuphqc-fy4kxh" style="color: rgb(0, 113, 133);"><i class="a-icon a-icon-extender-collapse" style="background-image: none; background-size: 400px 900px; background-repeat: no-repeat; display: inline-block; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; margin-right: 0.385em; width: 7px; height: 7px; background-position: -94px -293px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(15, 17, 17); border-image: initial; border-width: 0px 2px 2px 0px; padding: 3px; opacity: 1; transform: rotate(-135deg); margin-top: -1px; margin-left: 2px;"></i></a></div>