Biography India

Listen to the thrilling stories of Kevin J. Lear in Rajasthan, India. India is brought to life following an adventure into Rajasthan.

We begin with a man off balance: one in one thousand, the only child in town whose polio leads to partial paralysis. We meet his future wife, chanting Hai Rams for Gandhiji and choosing education over marriage. On one side of the line that divides this book, we follow them as their homeland splits in two and they are drawn together, moving to Canada and raising their children in mining towns and in crowded city apartments.

A chronicle of life on the resplendent island. Adele Barker and her son, Noah, settled into the central highlands of Sri Lanka for an 18-month sojourn, immersing themselves in the customs, cultures, and landscapes of the island: its elephants, birds, and monkeys; its hot curries and sweet mangoes; the cacophony of its markets; the resonant evening chants from its temples. When, having returned home to Tucson, Barker awakes on December 26, 2004, to see televised images of the island's southern shore disappearing into the ocean, she decides she must go back.

In May 1999, the Kargil insurgency was still being viewed as a routine affair. No one quite understood the magnitude of the situation. However, it soon emerged that infiltrators had captured high-altitude posts vacated by Indian soldiers during the winter months and thus had a tactical upper hand, while the Indian Army struggled with intelligence.

Alastair Humphreys walked across India, from the Coromandel Coast to the Malabar Coast, following the course of a holy river. Walking alone and spending the nights sleeping under the stars, in the homes of welcoming strangers, or in small towns and villages, he experienced the dusty enchantment of ordinary, real India on the smallest of budgets. There Are Other Rivers tells the story of the walk through an account of a single day as well as reflecting on the allure of difficult journeys and the eternal appeal of the open road.

My Journey: Transforming Dreams into Actions is the life story of India's 11th President, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, who started off as an insignificant little boy Rameswaram, but ended up becoming the president of the country, besides being a brilliant scientist as well. The book portrays the struggle that Dr. Kalam had to endure, as he climbed the ladder of success in life.

Set in Calcutta, London, the glacier-locked wilds of the Karakoram, and on Everest itself, The Last Englishmen is also the story of a generation. The cast of this exhilarating drama includes Indian and English writers and artists, explorers and Communist spies, Die Hards and Indian nationalists, political rogues and police informers. Key among them is a highborn Bengali poet named Sudhin Datta, a melancholy soul torn, like many of his generation, between hatred of the British Empire and a deep love of European literature, whose life would be upended by the arrival of war on his Calcutta doorstep.

Munoz provides new insight into Benazir Bhutto’s unprecedented rise and an unflinching, minute-by-minute narrative of the assassination itself. With impeccable research, Munoz also situates Bhutto in the decades-long history of U.S.-Pakistan relations and the emergence of global terrorism, pinpointing her death as the moment when those relations changed forever. The result is a gripping narrative of Pakistan’s turbulent political realities and the death of its leading politician.

Terry Tarnoff spent eight years during the 1970s traveling throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia. It was the early days of exploring what were to become legendary spots on the traveler's trail. Whether playing the clubs of Amsterdam, skirting the Yakuza in Japan, surviving the winters of Kathmandu, or forming a band in Goa, India, Terry's adventures are alternately engrossing, hilarious and deeply moving. Once upon a Time in Goa looks back from the perspective of modern times upon a period that continues to fascinate people of all generations across the globe.

An epic saga of hubris, cruelty, and redemption, Now the Hell Will Start tells the remarkable tale of the greatest manhunt of World War II. Herman Perry, besieged by the hardships of the Indo-Burmese jungle and the racism meted out by his white commanding officers, found solace in opium and marijuana. But on one fateful day, Perry shot his unarmed white lieutenant in the throes of an emotional collapse and fled into the jungle. Brendan I. Koerner spent nearly five years chasing Perry's ghost to the most remote corners of India and Burma.

How to Be a Writer is peppered with nuggets of practical advice for every person who is aspiring to write and be published, all told in Ruskin Bond's characteristic understated, tongue-in-cheek, humorous style. So, what is it that a person requires the most to become a writer? A love of books, of language, of life, an observant eye and a good memory, along with enthusiasm, optimism, and persistence. This book is an exclusive glimpse into the writing credo of Ruskin Bond, an author who has had an incredibly successful writing career spanning over 70 years.

An army medic who went beyond the call of duty amid a frenzy of treacherous bloodletting in Ladakh’s Galwan while his fellow soldiers fought the Chinese to death; the crew of an Indian Navy destroyer that put everything on the line to rescue hundreds from Cyclone Tauktae in the Arabian Sea; an Indian Air Force pilot who ejected from his doomed fighter less than two seconds before it hit the ground, only to find he was missing a leg.

The Army major who led the legendary September 2016 surgical strikes on terror launch pads across the LoC; a soldier who killed 11 terrorists in 10 days; a Navy officer who sailed into a treacherous port to rescue hundreds from an exploding war; a bleeding Air Force pilot who found himself flying a jet that had become a screaming fireball...their own accounts or of those who were with them in their final moments.

Born into the minor aristocracy (as Eugenia Peterson), Devi grew up in the midst of one of the most turbulent times in human history. Forced to flee the Russian Revolution as a teenager, she joined a famous Berlin cabaret troupe, dove into the vibrant prewar spiritualist movement, and, at a time when it was nearly unthinkable for a young European woman to travel alone, followed the charismatic theosophical leader Jiddu Krishnamurti to India.

What does it take to become an IPS officer? Hours of rigorous physical training, mental toughening and systemic conditioning at the national police academy, along with a never-give-up attitude, unwavering courage, grit and determination. Win All Your Battles, first published in Marathi as Kar Har Maidan Fateh, is the fascinating story of how Vishwas Nangre Patil rose from his humble village origins to become a steadfast, upright police officer and youth icon.

When Bhagat Singh was executed by the British after a sham trial for his involvement in the Lahore Conspiracy Case at the age of 23, he was glorified by the Indians as a martyr for his youth, his defiance and his reckless bravery. It was only many years later, after Independence in 1947, that his writings came to light. Today, it is these that set Bhagat Singh apart and reveal him as not just a hot-headed revolutionary who believed in the cult of the bomb but a widely-read intellectual inspired by the writings of Marx and Lenin.

Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) was an established Urdu short story writer and a rising screenwriter in Bombay at the time of India's partition in 1947, and he is perhaps best known for the short stories he wrote following his migration to Lahore in newly formed Pakistan. Ayesha Jalal draws on Manto's stories, sketches, and essays, as well as a trove of his private letters, to present an intimate history of partition and its devastating toll.

Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of 26. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary - and yet how typical - her family history truly was.

The audio edition of On the Grand Trunk Road is finally available, revised and updated with new material. Focusing on Coll's journeys in conflict-ridden India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Afghanistan as a bureau chief for The Washington Post, On the Grand Trunk Road reveals a little-seen area of the world where violence, corruption, and greed have had devastating effects on South Asians from all walks of life.

Mumbai, 2008. On the night of November 26, Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists attacked targets throughout the city, including the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, one of the world's most exclusive luxury hotels. With a deep understanding of the region and its politics and a narrative flair reminiscent of Midnight in Peking, journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy vividly unfold the tragic events in a real life thriller filled with suspense, tragedy, history, and heroism.