Pramit's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 10 Apr 2025 14:40:18 -0700 60 Pramit's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Flights 36885304 Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin’s heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller’s answer.

Here I am --
World in your head --
Your head in the world --
Syndrome --
Cabinet of curiosities --
Seeing is knowing --
Seven years of trips --
Guidance from Cioran --
Kunicki: water (I) --
Benedictus, quivenit]]> 416 Olga Tokarczuk 0525534199 Pramit 0 to-read 3.73 2007 Flights
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2007
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]]> Elegy, Southwest 214152231 A timely and urgent novel following a young married couple on a road trip through the American southwest as they grapple with the breakdown of their relationship in the shadow of environmental collapse, for fans of Rachel Cusk and Sigrid Nunez.

In November 2018, Eloise and Lewis rent a car in Las Vegas and take off on a two-week road trip across the American southwest. While wildfires rage, the married couple make their way through Nevada, California, Arizona, and Utah, tracing the course of the Colorado River, the aquatic artery on which the Southwest depends for survival. Lewis, an artist working for a prominent land art foundation, is grieving the recent death of his mother, while Eloise is an academic researching the past and future of the Colorado River as it threatens to run dry.

Over the course of their trip, Eloise, beginning to suspect she might be pregnant, helplessly witnesses Lewis’s descent as he struggles to find a place for himself in the desert where he never quite felt at home.

Elegy, Southwest is a novel which entwines a tragic love story with an intelligent and profound consideration of the way we now live alongside environmental breakdown; an elegy for lost love and for the landscape that makes us.]]> 288 Madeleine Watts 1668051621 Pramit 0 to-read 3.95 2025 Elegy, Southwest
author: Madeleine Watts
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
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]]> <![CDATA[Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents]]> 51152447 The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.�

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.]]> 544 Isabel Wilkerson 0593230256 Pramit 0 to-read 4.52 2020 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2020
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]]> Orthodoxy 87665 168 G.K. Chesterton 160096527X Pramit 0 to-read 4.17 1908 Orthodoxy
author: G.K. Chesterton
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1908
rating: 0
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]]> The Weight of Glory 29921671 208 C.S. Lewis Pramit 0 to-read 4.38 1949 The Weight of Glory
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1949
rating: 0
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]]> Shantaram 33600
So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear.

Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter Bombay's hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere.

As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city's poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power.

Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart. Based on the life of the author, it is by any measure the debut of an extraordinary voice in literature.]]> 936 Gregory David Roberts 192076920X Pramit 0 to-read 4.27 2003 Shantaram
author: Gregory David Roberts
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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]]> Songs of Kabir 700480 117 Kabir 1406931853 Pramit 0 to-read 4.17 1448 Songs of Kabir
author: Kabir
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1448
rating: 0
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]]> Lost Horizon 39092290 James Hilton’s bestselling adventure novel about a military man who stumbles on the world’s greatest hope for peace deep in Tibet: Shangri-La.

Hugh Conway saw humanity at its worst while fighting in the trenches of the First World War. Now, more than a decade later, Conway is a British diplomat serving in Afghanistan and facing war yet again—this time, a civil conflict forces him to flee the country by plane.

When his plane crashes high in the Himalayas, Conway and the other survivors are found by a mysterious guide and led to a breathtaking discovery: the hidden valley of Shangri-La.

Kept secret from the world for more than two hundred years, Shangri-La is like paradise—a place whose inhabitants live for centuries amid the peace and harmony of the fertile valley. But when the leader of the Shangri-La monastery falls ill, Conway and the others must face the daunting prospect of returning home to a world about to be torn open by war.

Thrilling and timeless, Lost Horizon is a masterpiece of modern fiction, and one of the most enduring classics of the twentieth century.
]]> 166 James Hilton Pramit 0 4.01 1933 Lost Horizon
author: James Hilton
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1933
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age]]> 216247514 From the author of The Immortal King Rao, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a personal and provocative exploration of how technology companies have reshaped human language, and, if we let them, could steal it from us

When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive teaching A.I.-powered machines to write and talk like human beings. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to get machines to communicate for us. But if this came to pass, would it be liberation or subjugation?

Vauhini Vara, an award-winning tech journalist and editor, had long been grappling with this question. In 2021, she used a predecessor of ChatGPT to write about her sister’s death, resulting in an essay that was both more moving and more disturbing than she could have imagined. It quickly went viral.

The experience, revealing both the appeal and the danger of corporate-owned language machines, forced Vara to interrogate how technology has changed how she uses language, from discovering online chat rooms as a preteen, to using social media as the Wall Street Journal�s first Facebook reporter, to testing early versions of ChatGPT—all while adding to the trove of human-created material that Big Tech exploits. Interspersed throughout this investigation are her own Google searches, Amazon reviews, and the other raw material of internet life—including the viral A.I. experiment that started it all. Searches illuminates Big Tech’s incursion into our lives, while proposing that by harnessing the collective imagination that taught us to communicate in the first place, we might invent a nobler, freer relationship with our machines and, ultimately, with one another.]]> 352 Vauhini Vara 0593701526 Pramit 0 to-read 4.19 2025 Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age
author: Vauhini Vara
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing]]> 55994102 A fast-paced look at the corporate dysfunction--the ruthless cost-cutting, toxic workplaces, and cutthroat management--that contributed to one of the worst tragedies in modern aviation

Boeing is a century-old titan of American industry. The largest exporter in the US, it played a central role in the early days of commercial flight, World War II bombing missions, and moon landings. It remains a linchpin in the awesome routine of air travel today. But the two crashes of its 737 MAX 8, in 2018 and 2019, exposed a shocking pattern of malfeasance, leading to the biggest crisis in the company's history. How did things go so horribly wrong at Boeing?

Flying Blind is the definitive expos� of a corporate scandal that has transfixed the world. It reveals how a broken corporate culture paved the way for disaster, losses that were altogether avoidable. Drawing from aviation insiders, as well as exclusive interviews with senior Boeing staff, past and present, it shows how in its race to beat Airbus, Boeing skimped on testing, outsourced critical software to unreliable third-parties, and convinced regulators to put planes into service without properly equipping pilots to fly them. In the chill that it cast over its workplace, it offers a parable for a corporate America that puts the interests of shareholders over customers, employees, and communities.

This is a searing account of how a once-iconic company fell prey to a win-at-all-costs mentality, destabilizing an industry and needlessly sacrificing 350 lives.]]> 336 Peter Robison 0385546491 Pramit 3 4.13 2021 Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing
author: Peter Robison
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found]]> 4364
As each individual story unfolds, Mehta also recounts his own efforts to make a home in Bombay after more than twenty years abroad. Candid, impassioned, funny, and heartrending, Maximum City is a revelation of an ancient and ever-changing world.]]> 542 Suketu Mehta 0375703403 Pramit 0 3.94 2004 Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
author: Suketu Mehta
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2004
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]]> <![CDATA[Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility]]> 189989 Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life, the games we play in business and politics, in the bedroom and on the battlefied -- games with winners and losers, a beginning and an end. Infinite games are more mysterious -- and ultimately more rewarding. They are unscripted and unpredictable; they are the source of true freedom.
In this elegant and compelling work, James Carse explores what these games mean, and what they can mean to you. He offers stunning new insights into the nature of property and power, of culture and community, of sexuality and self-discovery, opening the door to a world of infinite delight and possibility.
"An extraordinary little book . . . a wise and intimate companion, an elegant reminder of the real."
-- Brain/Mind Bulletin]]> 180 James P. Carse 0345341848 Pramit 0 to-read 3.72 1986 Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
author: James P. Carse
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[To the Ends of the Earth: The Selected Travels]]> 130507
Author and travel writer Paul Theroux does what no one else he travels to the isolated, unusual, and fascinating spots of the world, and creates an elegy to them that makes readers feel they are traveling with him. Evocative, breathtaking, intriguing, here is the armchair traveler's guide to the sites of the world he makes us feel we know.

Praise for To the Ends of the Earth

“Reads like a wonderful novel.� � The Pittsburgh Press

“Powerful . . . This compendium unequivocally offers insight into the mind of a foremost American fiction writer who became an accidental tourist.� � The Christian Science Monitor

“Theroux is a wonderful traveling companion. . . . To the Ends of the Earth combines the best of his travel writing. . . . With him the reader shares a conversation with a sultan on a polo ground in Malaysia; hears people ‘mourn with firecrackers, scattering cherrybombs on the tombstone� in a Chinese cemetery in Singapore; feels overdressed around nudists in Corsica; sees sandbagged houses and bombcraters left in Vietnam on a cold December day in 1973.� � The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star

“Travel writing at its best . . . As you travel voyeuristically with Theroux, across the vast wastelands of interior China, the convoluted cultures of Latin America or campy seacoast towns of England, you're struck with his slightly jaundiced eye for the overlooked but telling detail, his skeptic's ear for the offhand but important comment.� � The Houston Post]]> 384 Paul Theroux 0804111227 Pramit 0 to-read 3.85 1980 To the Ends of the Earth: The Selected Travels
author: Paul Theroux
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity]]> 215805908 How did America cease to be the land of opportunity?

We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are only accessible to the wealthy. But in America, this wasn’t always the case.

Though for most of world history, your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary If you didn’t like your lot in life, you could find a better location and reinvent yourself there. Americans moved to new places with unprecedented frequency, and, for two hundred years, that remarkable mobility was the linchpin of American economic and social opportunity.

In this illuminating debut, Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, shows us that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York’s Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in Flint, Michigan to Jane Jacobs� efforts to protect her vision of the West Village—has raised housing prices, deepened political divides, emboldened bigots, and trapped generations of people in poverty. Appelbaum shows us that these problems have a common people can’t move as readily as they used to. They are, in a word, stuck.

Cutting through more than a century of mythmaking, Stuck tells a vivid, surprising story of the people and ideas that caused our economic and social sclerosis and lays out common-sense ways to get Americans moving again.]]> 320 Yoni Appelbaum 0593449290 Pramit 0 to-read 4.32 2025 Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity
author: Yoni Appelbaum
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2025
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]]> The Undiscovered Self 67891 One of the world's greatest psychiatrists reveals how to embrace our own humanity and resist the pressures of an ever-changing world.

In this challenging and provocative work, Dr. Carl Jung—one of history's greatest minds—argues that civilization's future depends on our ability as individuals to resist the collective forces of society. Only by gaining an awareness and understanding of one's unconscious mind and true, inner nature�"the undiscovered self"—can we as individuals acquire the self-knowledge that is antithetical to ideological fanaticism. But this requires that we face our fear of the duality of the human psyche—the existence of good and the capacity for evil in every individual.

In this seminal book, Jung compellingly argues that only then can we begin to cope with the dangers posed by mass society�"the sum total of individuals"—and resist the potential threats posed by those in power.]]> 112 C.G. Jung 0451217322 Pramit 0 to-read 4.18 1961 The Undiscovered Self
author: C.G. Jung
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1961
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]]> The Atrocity Exhibition 70240 136 J.G. Ballard 1889307033 Pramit 0 to-read 3.83 1969 The Atrocity Exhibition
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa]]> 771332

Now including a new introduction by Paul Fussell, With the Old Breed presents a stirring, personal account of the vitality and bravery of the Marines in the battles at Peleliu and Okinawa. Born in Mobile, Alabama in 1923 and raised on riding, hunting, fishing, and a respect for history and legendary heroes such as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene Bondurant Sledge (later called "Sledgehammer" by his Marine Corps buddies) joined the Marines the year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and from 1943 to 1946 endured the events recorded in this book. In those years, he passed, often painfully, from innocence to experience.

Sledge enlisted out of patriotism, idealism, and youthful courage, but once he landed on the beach at Peleliu, it was purely a struggle for survival. Based on the notes he kept on slips of paper tucked secretly away in his New Testament, he simply and directly recalls those long months, mincing no words and sparing no pain. The reality of battle meant unbearable heat, deafening gunfire, unimaginable brutality and cruelty, the stench of death, and, above all, constant fear. Sledge still has nightmares about "the bloody, muddy month of May on Okinawa." But, as he also tellingly reveals, the bonds of friendship formed then will never be severed.

Sledge's honesty and compassion for the other marines, even complete strangers, sets him apart as a memoirist of war. Read as sobering history or as high adventure, With the Old Breed is a moving chronicle of action and courage.

]]> 326 Eugene B. Sledge 0195067142 Pramit 4 4.45 1981 With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
author: Eugene B. Sledge
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1981
rating: 4
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]]> No Longer Human 194746 No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title).

Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world � suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, � but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima.

Cover painting by Noe Nojechowiz, from the collection of John and Barbara Duncan; design by Gertrude Huston]]> 176 Osamu Dazai Pramit 0 to-read 3.99 1948 No Longer Human
author: Osamu Dazai
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Systems Bible: The Beginner's Guide to Systems Large and Small]]> 583785 Book is in Good condition 316 John Gall 0961825170 Pramit 0 to-read 3.92 1977 The Systems Bible: The Beginner's Guide to Systems Large and Small
author: John Gall
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City]]> 61097667
Emergent Tokyo answers this question in the affirmative by delving into Tokyo's most distinctive urban spaces, from iconic neon nightlife to tranquil neighborhood backstreets. Tokyo at its best offers a new vision for a human-scale urban ecosystem, where ordinary residents can shape their own environment in ways large and small, and communities take on a life of their own beyond government master planning and corporate profit-seeking. As Tokyoites ourselves, we uncover how five key features of Tokyo's cityscape - yokochō alleyways, multi-tenant zakkyo buildings, undertrack infills, flowing ankyo streets, and dense low-rise neighborhoods - enable this 'emergent' urbanism, allowing the city to organize itself from the bottom up.

This book demystifies Tokyo's emergent urbanism for an international audience, explaining its origins, its place in today's Tokyo, and its role in the Tokyo of tomorrow. Visitors to Japan, architects, and urban policy practitioners alike will come away with a fresh understanding of the world's premier megacity - and a practical guide for how to bring Tokyo-style intimacy, adaptability, and spontaneity to other cities around the world.]]> 250 Jorge Almazán Pramit 0 to-read 4.47 2022 Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City
author: Jorge Almazán
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/31
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]]> A New Kind of Science 238558
Wolfram uses his approach to tackle a remarkable array of fundamental problems in science, from the origins of apparent randomness in physical systems, to the development of complexity in biology, the ultimate scope and limitations of mathematics, the possibility of a truly fundamental theory of physics, the interplay between free will and determinism, and the character of intelligence in the universe.]]> 1280 Stephen Wolfram 1579550088 Pramit 0 to-read 3.61 2002 A New Kind of Science
author: Stephen Wolfram
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/30
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]]> Bright Dead Things 24945396
A book of bravado and introspection, of 21st century feminist swagger and harrowing terror and loss, this fourth collection considers how we build our identities out of place and human contact—tracing in intimate detail the various ways the speaker’s sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth, and falls in love. Limón has often been a poet who wears her heart on her sleeve, but in these extraordinary poems that heart becomes a “huge beating genius machine� striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. “I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,� the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O’Hara, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty, Limón’s work is consistently generous and accessible—though every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt, and lived.]]> 105 Ada Limon 1571314717 Pramit 0 to-read 4.21 2015 Bright Dead Things
author: Ada Limon
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection]]> 23164946 From the author of the New York Times #1 bestseller The Untethered Soul comes this thought-provoking, inspirational memoir on the magic that happens when you just let go

Spirituality is meant to bring about harmony and peace. But the diversity of our philosophies, beliefs, concepts, and views about the soul often leads to confusion. To reconcile the noise that clouds spirituality, Michael Singer combines accounts of his own life journey to enlightenment—from his years as a hippie-loner to his success as a computer program engineer to his work in spiritual and humanitarian efforts—with lessons on how to put aside conflicting beliefs, let go of worries, and transform misdirected desires. Singer provides a road map to a new way of living not in the moment, but to exist in a state of perpetual happiness.]]> 252 Michael A. Singer 080414110X Pramit 0 to-read 4.00 2015 The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection
author: Michael A. Singer
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> Virgin Soil 781627 Virgin Soil, his biggest and most ambitious work, he sought to balance his deep affection for his country and his people, with his growing apprehensions about what their future held in store. At the heart of the book is the story of a young man and a young woman, torn between love and politics, who struggle to make headway against the complacency of the powerful, the inarticulate misery of the powerless, and the stifling conventions of provincial life. This rich and complex book, at once a love story, a devastating, and bitterly funny social satire, and, perhaps most movingly of all, a heartfelt celebration of the immense beauty of the Russian countryside, is a tragic masterpiece in which one of the world's finest novelists confronts the enduring question of the place of happiness in a political world.]]> 355 Ivan Turgenev 0940322455 Pramit 0 to-read 3.84 1877 Virgin Soil
author: Ivan Turgenev
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1877
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Sun After Dark: Flights Into the Foreign]]> 131103 But the true subject of Sun After Dark is the dislocations of the mind in transit. And so Iyer takes us along to meditate with Leonard Cohen and talk geopolitics with the Dalai Lama. He navigates the Magritte-like landscape of jet lag, “a place that no human had ever been until forty or so years ago.� And on every page of this poetic and provocative book, he compels us to redraw our map of the world.]]> 240 Pico Iyer 1400031036 Pramit 0 to-read 3.71 2004 Sun After Dark: Flights Into the Foreign
author: Pico Iyer
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/10
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]]> <![CDATA[The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters]]> 186538 In Xanadu, became an instant backpacker's classic, winning a stream of literary prizes. City of Djinns and From the Holy Mountain soon followed, to universal critical praise. Yet it is India that Dalrymple continues to return to in his travels, and his fourth book, The Age of Kali, is his most reflective book to date.

The result of 10 year's living and traveling throughout the Indian subcontinent, The Age of Kali emerges from Dalrymple's uneasy sense that the region is slipping into the most fearsome of all epochs in ancient Hindu cosmology: "the Kali Yug, the Age of Kali, the lowest possible throw, an epoch of strife, corruption, darkness, and disintegration." "The brilliance of this book lies in its refusal to reflect any cultural pessimism. Dalrymple's love for the subcontinent, and his feel for its diverse cultural identity, comes across in every page, which makes its chronicles of political corruption, ethnic violence, and social disintegration all the more poignant. The scope of the book is particularly impressive, from the vivid opening chapters portraying the lawless caste violence of Bihar, to interviews with the drug barons on the North-West Frontier, and Dalrymple's extraordinary encounter with the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Some of the most fascinating sections of the book are Dalrymple's interviews with Imran Khan and Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, which read like nonfiction companion pieces to Salman Rushdie's bitterly satirical Shame. The Age of Kali is a dark, disturbing book that takes the pulse of a continent facing some tough questions. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk]]> 394 William Dalrymple 1864501723 Pramit 0 to-read 3.98 1998 The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters
author: William Dalrymple
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Innocents Abroad, Or, the New Pilgrims' Progress]]> 2443 560 Mark Twain 0812967054 Pramit 0 to-read 3.83 1869 The Innocents Abroad, Or, the New Pilgrims' Progress
author: Mark Twain
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1869
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Video Night in Kathmandu and Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East]]> 131107 400 Pico Iyer 0679722165 Pramit 0 to-read 3.87 1988 Video Night in Kathmandu and Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East
author: Pico Iyer
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Tale of Genji 7042 1182 Murasaki Shikibu 014243714X Pramit 0 to-read 3.72 1000 The Tale of Genji
author: Murasaki Shikibu
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> Moby-Dick or, The Whale 153747 "It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it."

So Melville wrote of his masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. In part, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopaedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of its author's lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is also a profound inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.

This edition of Moby-Dick, which reproduces the definitive text of the novel, includes invaluable explanatory notes, along with maps, illustrations, and a glossary of nautical terms.]]> 720 Herman Melville 0142437247 Pramit 0 to-read 3.53 1851 Moby-Dick or, The Whale
author: Herman Melville
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1851
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory]]> 925533
This unabridged reproduction of the 1896 edition of lectures delivered at Harvard College is a study of "why, when, and how beauty appears, what conditions an object must fulfill to be beautiful, what elements of our nature make us sensible of beauty, and what the relation is between the constitution of the object and the excitement of our susceptibility."

Santayana first analyzes the nature of beauty, finding it irrational, "pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing." He then proceeds to the materials of beauty, showing what all human functions can contribute: love, social instincts, senses, etc. Beauty of form is then analyzed, and finally the author discusses the expression of beauty. Literature, religion, values, evil, wit, humor, and the possibility of finite perfection are all examined. Presentation throughout the work is concrete and easy to follow, with examples drawn from art, history, anthropology, psychology, and similar areas.]]> 192 George Santayana 0486202380 Pramit 0 to-read 3.94 1896 The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory
author: George Santayana
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1896
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Theory of Games and Economic Behavior]]> 483055

This sixtieth anniversary edition includes not only the original text but also an introduction by Harold Kuhn, an afterword by Ariel Rubinstein, and reviews and articles on the book that appeared at the time of its original publication in the New York Times , tthe American Economic Review , and a variety of other publications. Together, these writings provide readers a matchless opportunity to more fully appreciate a work whose influence will yet resound for generations to come.]]> 776 John von Neumann 0691130612 Pramit 0 to-read 4.15 1944 Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
author: John von Neumann
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1944
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Message 210943364
The first of the book’s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the “steampunk� city of “old traditions and new machinery,� but everywhere he goes he feels as if he’s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates’s own books. There he discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed by the “racial reckoning� of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths of the community—a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares.

And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we’ve accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians—the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him—and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.]]> 232 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0593230388 Pramit 0 4.52 2024 The Message
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Human Nature: A Walking History Of The Himalayan Landscape]]> 220139660 Brand New Thomas Bell 0143467123 Pramit 0 3.33 Human Nature: A Walking History Of The Himalayan Landscape
author: Thomas Bell
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.33
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/07
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]]> No Full Stops in India 791184
'The ten essays, written with clarity, warmth of feeling and critical balance and understanding, provide as lively a view as one can hope for of the panorama of India.� K. Natwar-Singh in the Financial Times]]> 336 Mark Tully 0140104801 Pramit 0 3.81 1991 No Full Stops in India
author: Mark Tully
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders]]> 28110891
Here are natural wonders � the dazzling glowworm caves in New Zealand, or a baobob tree in South Africa that’s so large it has a pub inside where 15 people can drink comfortably. Architectural marvels, including the M. C. Escher-like stepwells in India. Mind-boggling events, like the Baby Jumping Festival in Spain, where men dressed as devils vault over rows of squirming infants.

Not to mention the Great Stalacpipe Organ in Virginia, Turkmenistan’s 45-year hole of fire called the Door to Hell, hanging coffins suspended off a cliff face in the Philippines, eccentric bone museums in Italy, or a weather-forecasting invention that was powered by leeches, still on display in Devon, England.

More cabinet of curiosities than traditional guidebook, Atlas Obscura revels in the unexpected, the overlooked, the bizarre, and the mysterious. Every page expands our sense of how strange and marvelous the world really is. And with its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, and maps for every region of the world, it is a book you can open anywhere. But with caution: It’s almost impossible not to turn to the next entry, and the next, and the next.

Let your curiosity be your compass.]]> 470 Joshua Foer 0761169083 Pramit 0 to-read 4.26 2016 Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders
author: Joshua Foer
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty]]> 12158480 Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are?

Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence?

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories.

Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including:

- China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed andoverwhelm the West?
- Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority?
- What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More
philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions?

Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.]]> 529 Daron Acemoğlu 0307719219 Pramit 0 to-read 4.06 2012 Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
author: Daron Acemoğlu
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/14
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]]> This Is Your Mind on Plants 56015023 This Is Your Mind on Plants, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs--opium, caffeine, and mescaline--and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings?]]> 288 Michael Pollan 0593296907 Pramit 0 3.86 2021 This Is Your Mind on Plants
author: Michael Pollan
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō]]> 321596 Essays in Idleness reflects the congenial priest's thoughts on a variety of subjects. His brief writings, some no more than a few sentences long and ranging in focus from politics and ethics to nature and mythology, mark the crystallization of a distinct Japanese principle: that beauty is to be celebrated, though it will ultimately perish. Through his appreciation of the world around him and his keen understanding of historical events, Kenkō conveys the essence of Buddhist philosophy and its subtle teachings for all readers. Insisting on the uncertainty of this world, Kenkō asks that we waste no time in following the way of Buddha.

In this fresh edition, Donald Keene's critically acclaimed translation is joined by a new preface, in which Keene himself looks back at the ripples created by Kenkō's musings, especially for modern readers.]]> 235 Yoshida Kenkō 0231112556 Pramit 0 to-read 3.94 1332 Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō
author: Yoshida Kenkō
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1332
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/19
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]]> Slaughterhouse-Five 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.�

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.

Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 275 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Pramit 0 4.10 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/17
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]]> The Dharma Bums 412732 On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums is sparked by Kerouac's expansiveness, humor, and a contagious zest for life.]]> 244 Jack Kerouac Pramit 0 to-read 3.94 1958 The Dharma Bums
author: Jack Kerouac
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention� and How to Think Deeply Again]]> 57933306 Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening--and how to get our attention back.

In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions--even abandoning his phone for three months--but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention--and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.

We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers' productivity.

Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus--as individuals, and as a society--if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.]]> 357 Johann Hari 0593138511 Pramit 0 to-read, maybe 4.22 2022 Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again
author: Johann Hari
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/10
shelves: to-read, maybe
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]]> The Overcoat 537094 57 Nikolai Gogol 1419176528 Pramit 0 to-read 4.17 1842 The Overcoat
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1842
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/10
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]]> A Secular Age 824412 874 Charles Margrave Taylor 0674026764 Pramit 0 to-read 4.28 2007 A Secular Age
author: Charles Margrave Taylor
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Be Here Now 41580312 116 Ram Dass Pramit 0 to-read 4.40 1971 Be Here Now
author: Ram Dass
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> Mild Vertigo 62043762 Mild Vertigo explores the dizzying inability to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae that make up a life confined to the home, where both everything and nothing happens.

With shades of Clarice Lispector, Mavis Gallant and Lucy Ellman, this late-period novel by the esteemed novelist, essayist, and film and literary critic Mieko Kanai - whose often dark and cynical work occupies something of a cult place within the Japanese canon - is a disconcerting and astute portrait of life in late-stage capitalist society.]]> 176 Mieko Kanai 1804270385 Pramit 0 to-read 3.52 1997 Mild Vertigo
author: Mieko Kanai
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/02
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]]> Kafka on the Shore 4929 Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]> 467 Haruki Murakami 1400079276 Pramit 0 to-read 4.14 2002 Kafka on the Shore
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/29
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]]> The Setting Sun 194740
The story is told through the eyes of Kazuko, the unmarried daughter of a widowed aristocrat. Her search for self meaning in a society devoid of use for her forms the crux of Dazai’s novel. It is a sad story, and structurally is a novel very much within the confines of the Japanese take on the novel in a way reminiscent of authors such as Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata � the social interactions are peripheral and understated, nuances must be drawn, and for readers more used to Western novelistic forms this comes across as being rather wishy-washy.

Kazuko’s mother falls ill, and due to their financial circumstances they are forced to take a cottage in the countryside. Her brother, who became addicted to opium during the war is missing. When he returns, Kazuko attempts to form a liaison with the novelist Uehara. This romantic displacement only furthers to deepen her alienation from society.]]> 175 Osamu Dazai 0811200329 Pramit 0 to-read 4.00 1947 The Setting Sun
author: Osamu Dazai
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1947
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/29
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]]> <![CDATA[A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees]]> 24874345
Moonlight, sake, spring blossom, idle moments, a woman's hair - these exquisite reflections on life's fleeting pleasures by a thirteenth-century Japanese monk are delicately attuned to nature and the senses.

Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.

Yoshida Kenko (c. 1283-1352).

Kenko's work is included in Penguin Classics in Essays in Idleness and Hojoki.]]> 51 Yoshida Kenkō 0141398256 Pramit 0 to-read 3.73 1340 A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees
author: Yoshida Kenkō
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1340
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944 (Pacific War Trilogy) by Ian W. Toll(2015-09-21)]]> 135683098 1 0 W. W. Norton & Company Pramit 0 4.45 The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944 (Pacific War Trilogy) by Ian W. Toll(2015-09-21)
author: W. W. Norton & Company
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.45
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/26
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]]> The Sound and the Fury 10975 366 William Faulkner Pramit 0 to-read 3.86 1929 The Sound and the Fury
author: William Faulkner
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (Phaedrus, #1)]]> 629 Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an examination of how we live, a meditation on how to live better set around the narration of a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest, undertaken by a father & his young son.]]> 540 Robert M. Pirsig 0060589469 Pramit 0 to-read 3.78 1974 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (Phaedrus, #1)
author: Robert M. Pirsig
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us]]> 20893623
In Of Orcas and Men, a marvelously compelling mix of cultural history, environmental reporting, and scientific research, David Neiwert explores an extraordinary species and its occasionally fraught relationship with human beings. Beginning with their role in myth and contemporary popular culture, Neiwert shows how killer whales came to capture our imaginations, and brings to life the often catastrophic environmental consequences of that appeal.

In the tradition of Barry Lopez’s classic Of Wolves and Men, David Neiwert’s book is a triumph of reporting, observation, and research, and a powerful tribute to one of the animal kingdom’s most remarkable members.]]> 320 David Neiwert 1468308653 Pramit 0 to-read 4.25 2015 Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us
author: David Neiwert
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Shangri-La: A Travel Guide To The Himalayan Dream (Bradt Travel Guide)]]> 5130969 Lost Horizon. No sooner was Shangri-La created by Hilton than a host of places staked claims to being the real location that inspired the book.

This guide to the mythical site of Shangri-La is rooted in the glorious reality of the Himalaya, encompassing parts of southwest China, Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, Sikkim and Ladakh. It forms a concise guide to the most remote areas of the region, with a focus on major mountain peaks, and some well-chosen treks in each area.

Practical information and maps will ensure that visitors can make the most of their trip to this other-worldly destination, while armchair readers can browse and dream...

� First and only guide on the market blending exploration of the myth with practical advice on visiting the contested sites

� Focus on the region’s legendary sacred peaks and monasteries, including acclimatisation hikes, as well as tougher treks

� Provides background on oddball adventurers and seekers of lost kingdoms of the Himalaya

� Sidebars on esoteric topics like Tracking the Yeti (Bhutan) and Crazy about Hockey (Ladakh)

� Illustrated wildlife appendix � a concise field guide to the most unusual animals

� Extended color photo sections to illustrate the concept of Shangri-La]]> 248 Michael Buckley 1841622044 Pramit 0 to-read 3.71 2008 Shangri-La: A Travel Guide To The Himalayan Dream (Bradt Travel Guide)
author: Michael Buckley
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India]]> 5854
“Whatever his literary form, Naipaul is a master.� � The New York Review of Books

Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man and a deluded American religious seeker. An Area of Darkness also abounds with Naipaul’s strikingly original responses to India’s paralyzing caste system, its apparently serene acceptance of poverty and squalor, and the conflict between its desire for self-determination and its nostalgia for the British raj. The result may be the most elegant and passionate book ever written about the subcontinent.]]> 304 V.S. Naipaul 0375708359 Pramit 0 to-read 3.67 1964 An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India
author: V.S. Naipaul
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II]]> 62120824 A riveting, immersive account of the agonizing decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan--a crucial turning point in World War II and geopolitical history--with you-are-there immediacy by the New York Times bestselling author of Ike's Bluff and Sea of Thunder.

At 9:20 a.m. on the morning of May 30, General Groves receives a message to report to the office of the secretary of war "at once." Stimson is waiting for him. He wants to know: has Groves selected the targets yet?

So begins this suspenseful, impeccably researched history that draws on new access to diaries to tell the story of three men who were intimately involved with America's decision to drop the atomic bomb--and Japan's decision to surrender. They are Henry Stimson, the American Secretary of War, who had overall responsibility for decisions about the atom bomb; Gen. Carl "Tooey" Spaatz, head of strategic bombing in the Pacific, who supervised the planes that dropped the bombs; and Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, the only one in Emperor Hirohito's Supreme War Council who believed even before the bombs were dropped that Japan should surrender.

Henry Stimson had served in the administrations of five presidents, but as the U.S. nuclear program progressed, he found himself tasked with the unimaginable decision of determining whether to deploy the bomb. The new president, Harry S. Truman, thus far a peripheral figure in the momentous decision, accepted Stimson's recommendation to drop the bomb. Army Air Force Commander Gen. Spaatz ordered the planes to take off. Like Stimson, Spaatz agonized over the command even as he recognized it would end the war. After the bombs were dropped, Foreign Minister Togo was finally able to convince the emperor to surrender.

To bring these critical events to vivid life, bestselling author Evan Thomas draws on the diaries of Stimson, Togo and Spaatz, contemplating the immense weight of their historic decision. In Road to Surrender, an immersive, surprising, moving account, Thomas lays out the behind-the-scenes thoughts, feelings, motivations, and decision-making of three people who changed history.]]> 336 Evan Thomas 0399589252 Pramit 4 4.30 2023 Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II
author: Evan Thomas
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/06/24
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]]> The Reckoning 75416 800 David Halberstam 0380721473 Pramit 0 to-read 4.39 1986 The Reckoning
author: David Halberstam
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945]]> 50896142 Twilight of the Gods is a riveting account of the harrowing last year of World War II in the Pacific, when the U.S. Navy won the largest naval battle in history; Douglas MacArthur made good his pledge to return to the Philippines; waves of kamikazes attacked the Allied fleets; the Japanese fought to the last man on one island after another; B-29 bombers burned down Japanese cities; and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vaporized in atomic blasts.


Ian W. Toll’s narratives of combat in the air, at sea, and on the beaches are as gripping as ever, but he also takes the reader into the halls of power in Washington and Tokyo, where the great questions of strategy and diplomacy were decided. Lionel Barber of the Financial Times chose the second volume of the series (The Conquering Tide) as the preemiment book of 2016, calling it “military history at its best.� Readers who have been waiting for the conclusion of Toll’s masterpiece will be thrilled by this final volume.]]> 944 Ian W. Toll 039308065X Pramit 0 4.74 2020 Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945
author: Ian W. Toll
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.74
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/10
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]]> The Death of Ivan Ilych 18386
How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

This short novel was an artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction.
A thoroughly absorbing, and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.]]> 86 Leo Tolstoy Pramit 0 4.12 1886 The Death of Ivan Ilych
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1886
rating: 0
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]]> The Idiot 12505 667 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0679642420 Pramit 0 to-read 4.22 1869 The Idiot
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1869
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community]]> 4119 Eloquent and visionary, this is a compelling argument for these settings of informal public life as essential for the health both of our communities and ourselves. And its message is being heard: Today, entrepreneurs from Seattle to Florida are heeding the call of The Great Good Place--opening coffee houses, bookstores, community centers, bars, and other establishments and proudly acknowledging their indebtedness to this book.



]]> 384 Ray Oldenburg 1569246815 Pramit 0 to-read 3.86 1989 The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community
author: Ray Oldenburg
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/25
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]]> The Machine Stops 4711854 The Machine Stops is a science fiction short story (12,300 words) by E. M. Forster. After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster's The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928.

After being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the populist anthology Modern Short Stories. In 1973 it was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.

The book is particularly notable for predicting new technologies such as instant messaging and the internet.]]> 35 E.M. Forster 140990329X Pramit 0 to-read 4.06 1909 The Machine Stops
author: E.M. Forster
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1909
rating: 0
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]]> Interpreter of Maladies 5439 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.]]> 198 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618101365 Pramit 0 to-read 4.18 1999 Interpreter of Maladies
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/23
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]]> <![CDATA[The Silk Roads: A New History of the World]]> 25812847
Frankopan realigns our understanding of the world, pointing us eastward. It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions. From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the twentieth century—this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East.]]> 636 Peter Frankopan 1408839970 Pramit 0 to-read 4.16 2015 The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
author: Peter Frankopan
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/23
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]]> Americanah 15796700 477 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Pramit 0 to-read 4.32 2013 Americanah
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/18
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]]> The Fire Next Time 464260 The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two “letters,� written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as “sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle…all presented in searing, brilliant prose,� The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of our literature.]]> 106 James Baldwin 067974472X Pramit 5 4.55 1963 The Fire Next Time
author: James Baldwin
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.55
book published: 1963
rating: 5
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]]> The Snow Leopard 764165 338 Peter Matthiessen 0140255087 Pramit 0 to-read 4.08 1978 The Snow Leopard
author: Peter Matthiessen
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1978
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind]]> 23692271 512 Yuval Noah Harari Pramit 0 4.34 2011 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> Beirut Hellfire Society 41817567

In Beirut Hellfire Society, award- winning author Rawi Hage� praised for his “fierce poetic originality� (Boston Globe) and “uncompromising vision� (Colm Tóibín)� asks: What, after all, can be preserved in the face of certain change and imminent death? The answer is at once propulsive, elegiac, outrageous, profane, and transcendent� and a profoundly moving meditation on what it means to live through war.]]> 288 Rawi Hage 1324002913 Pramit 0 3.53 Beirut Hellfire Society
author: Rawi Hage
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.53
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent]]> 187149
Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe.

Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably.

This classic is now further honored by Isabel Allende’s inspiring introduction. Universally recognized as one of the most important writers of our time, Allende once again contributes her talents to literature, to political principles, and to enlightenment.]]> 317 Eduardo Galeano 0853459916 Pramit 0 to-read 4.31 1971 Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
author: Eduardo Galeano
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/04
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]]> <![CDATA[The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America]]> 11097892 of the Cold War, the liberation of Eastern Europe, and the collapse of the Soviet Union must be tempered by the realization that Latin Americans paid a ghastly price during the Cold War. Dictatorship, authoritarianism, the methodical abuse of human rights, and campaigns of state terrorism
characterized life in Latin America between 1945 and 1989. Countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala endured appalling levels of political violence. The U.S. repeatedly intervened in the internal affairs of Latin American nations in the name of anticommunism,
destabilizing constitutional governments and aiding and abetting those who murdered and tortured.

Incorporating recently declassified documents, Rabe supplements his strong, provocative historical narrative with stories about the fates of ordinary Latin Americans, an extensive chronology, a series of evocative photographs, and an annotated bibliography.]]> 288 Stephen G. Rabe 0195333233 Pramit 0 to-read 4.03 2011 The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America
author: Stephen G. Rabe
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/04
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]]> <![CDATA[The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease]]> 23214265
The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease. But in The Biology of Desire , cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease, and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing.

Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it's supposed to do-seek pleasure and relief-in a world that's not cooperating. As a result, most treatment based on the disease model fails. Lewis shows how treatment can be retooled to achieve lasting recovery. This is enlightening and optimistic reading for anyone who has wrestled with addiction either personally or professionally.]]> 256 Marc Lewis 1610394372 Pramit 0 to-read 4.06 2015 The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease
author: Marc Lewis
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia]]> 173509030 'Every so often, a new work emerges of such immense scholarship and weight that it really does add a significant difference to our understanding of the Second World War and its consequences. Judgement in Tokyo is one such, a monumental work in both scale and detail, beautifully constructed and written, leaving the reader not only moved but disturbed as well.' � James Holland, The Sunday Telegraph

'A work of singular importance . . . balanced, original, human, accessible, and riveting' � Philippe Sands, author of East-West Street

'Always engrossing . . . a breathtakingly ambitious and well-executed piece of history, unlikely to be bettered as a portrait of the trials and their place in postwar global history' � History Today

A landmark, magisterial history of the postwar trial of Japan’s leaders as war criminals, and their impact on the modern history of Asia and the world.

In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes and to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was no more than victors� justice.

Gary J. Bass' Judgement at Tokyo is a magnificent, riveting story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the postwar era in the Asia–Pacific.

'A comprehensive, landmark and riveting book' � The Washington Post, 'The 10 Best Books of 2023']]> 913 Gary J. Bass 1509812776 Pramit 0 to-read 4.31 2023 Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
author: Gary J. Bass
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/19
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ronin: A Novel Based on a Zen Myth]]> 149591
The violence of twelfth-century Japan explodes in this half-legendary, half-true story of a violent man who becomes a folk hero. A heartless savage, the Ronin, or "wandering samurai," slashes his way up from the gutter to wealth, honor and status. In spite of his crime sand bloodthirsty cruelty, he bears the strange mark of destiny that the wise see and respect, even as he destroys them.

Told with humor and irony, the tale ranges from the pleasantly colloquial to the brutally satiric, yet never relents in the Ronin's ruthless search for the truth. The storyteller hides nothing and speaks bluntly, yet this jewel-like tale shimmers with tantalizing riddles that will haunt the reader just as they haunted the Ronin. Sure to shock, confound and ultimately inspire readers, The Ronin is loosely based upon an ancient legend told to the author by the Zen Master Nyogen Senzaki.]]> 159 William Dale Jennings 0804834148 Pramit 0 to-read 3.99 1968 The Ronin: A Novel Based on a Zen Myth
author: William Dale Jennings
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/27
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]]> Memoirs of a Geisha 929
In "Memoirs of a Geisha," we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction - at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful - and completely unforgettable.]]> 503 Arthur Golden 1400096898 Pramit 0 to-read 4.31 1997 Memoirs of a Geisha
author: Arthur Golden
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things]]> 91540 Teeming with undead samurais, man-eating goblins, and other terrifying demons, these 20 classic ghost stories inspired the Oscar®-nominated 1964 film of the same name.]]> 256 Lafcadio Hearn 0804836620 Pramit 0 to-read 3.92 1904 Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
author: Lafcadio Hearn
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1904
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Storm Clouds over the Pacific, 1931�41 (War in the Far East, #1)]]> 43528417 A readable and entertaining introduction to aerial combat in the series that "would be excellent for someone with an early interest in military history" (Army Rumour Service).

Just over a decade after the first successful powered flight, fearless pioneers were flying over the battlefields of France in flimsy biplanes. Though the infantry in their muddy trenches might see aerial combat as glorious and chivalric, the reality was very different and undeniably new Royal Flying Corps subalterns in 1917 had a life expectancy of 11 days.

In 1915 the term "ace" was coined to denote a pilot adept at downing enemy aircraft, and top aces like the Red Baron, Ren� Fonck and Billy Bishop became household names. The idea of the ace continued after the 1918 Armistice, but as the size of air forces increased, the prominence of the ace diminished. But still, the pilots who swirled and danced in Hurricanes and Spitfires over southern England in 1940 were, and remain, feted as "the Few" who stood between Britain and invasion. Flying aircraft advanced beyond the wildest dreams of Great War pilots, the "top" fighter aces of World War II would accrue hundreds of kills, though their life expectancy was still measured in weeks, not years.

World War II cemented the vital role of air power, and postwar innovation gave fighter pilots jet-powered fighters, enabling them to pursue duels over huge areas above modern battlefields. This entertaining introduction explores the history and cult of the fighter ace from the first pilots through late 20th century conflicts, which leads to discussion of whether the era of the fighter ace is at an end.]]> 441 Peter Harmsen 1612004814 Pramit 0 to-read 4.37 Storm Clouds over the Pacific, 1931–41 (War in the Far East, #1)
author: Peter Harmsen
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.37
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]]> <![CDATA[Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection and the Making of the Modern World, 1945-1965]]> 17674967 A sweeping history of the Cold War’s many "hot� wars born in the last gasps of empire

The Cold War reigns in popular imagination as a period of tension between the two post-World War II superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, without direct conflict. Drawing from new archival research, prize-winning historian Michael Burleigh gives new meaning to the seminal decades of 1945 to 1965 by examining the many, largely forgotten, "hot� wars fought around the world. As once-great Western colonial empires collapsed, counter-insurgencies campaigns raged in the Philippines, the Congo, Iran, and other faraway places. Dozens of new nations struggled into existence, the legacies of which are still felt today. Placing these vicious struggles alongside the period-defining United States and Soviet standoffs in Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba, Burleigh swerves from Algeria to Kenya, to Vietnam and Kashmir, interspersing top-level diplomatic negotiations with portraits of the charismatic local leaders. The result is a dazzling work of history, a searing analysis of the legacy of imperialism and a reminder of just how the United States became the world’s great enforcer.]]> 587 Michael Burleigh 0670025453 Pramit 0 to-read 3.94 2013 Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection and the Making of the Modern World, 1945-1965
author: Michael Burleigh
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Japan and the Shackles of the Past (What Everyone Needs to Know (Hardcover))]]> 18635378
In Japan and the Shackles of the Past, R. Taggart Murphy places the current troubles of Japan in a sweeping historical context, moving deftly from early feudal times to the modern age that began with the Meiji Restoration. Combining fascinating analyses of Japanese culture and society over the centuries with hard-headed accounts of Japan's numerous political regimes, Murphy not only reshapes our understanding of Japanese history, but of Japan's place in the contemporary world. He concedes that Japan has indeed been out of sight and out of mind in recent decades, but contends that this is already changing. Political and economic developments in Japan today risk upheaval in the pivotal arena of Northeast Asia, inviting comparisons with Europe on the eve of the First World War. America's half-completed effort to remake Japan in the late 1940s is unraveling, and the American foreign policy and defense establishment is directly culpable for what has happened. The one apparent exception to Japan's malaise is the vitality of its pop culture, but it's actually no exception at all; rather, it provides critical clues to what is going on now.

With insights into everything from Japan's politics and economics to the texture of daily life, gender relations, the changing business landscape, and popular and high culture, Japan and the Shackles of the Past is the indispensable guide to understanding Japan in all its complexity.
]]> 443 R. Taggart Murphy 0199845980 Pramit 0 to-read 4.26 2014 Japan and the Shackles of the Past (What Everyone Needs to Know (Hardcover))
author: R. Taggart Murphy
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster]]> 40538681
Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers not only its own citizens, but all of humanity. It is a story that has long remained in dispute, clouded from the beginning in secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation.

Midnight In Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of history's worst nuclear disaster, of human resilience and ingenuity and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will - lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats - remain not just vital but necessary.

Now, Higginbotham brings us closer to the truth behind this colossal tragedy.]]> 538 Adam Higginbotham 1501134612 Pramit 0 to-read 4.35 2019 Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
author: Adam Higginbotham
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel]]> 50831138
For Shahnaz Habib, an Indian Muslim woman, travel has always been a complicated pleasure. Yet, journeys at home and abroad have profoundly shaped her life. In this inquiring and surprising debut, Habib traces a history of travel from pilgrimages to empires to safaris, taking on colonialist modes of thinking about travel and asking who gets to travel and who gets to write about it.

Threaded through the book are inviting and playful analyses of obvious and not-so-obvious travel artifacts: passports, carousels, bougainvilleas, guidebooks, expressways, the idea of wanderlust. Together, they tell a subversive history of travel as a Euro-American mode of consumerism—but as any traveler knows, travel is more than that. As an immigrant whose loved ones live across continents, Habib takes a deeply curious and joyful look at a troubled and beloved activity.]]> 288 Shahnaz Habib 1646220153 Pramit 0 to-read 3.86 2023 Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel
author: Shahnaz Habib
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Starborn: How the Stars Made Us (and Who We Would Be Without Them)]]> 103490063
For as long as humans have lived, we have lived beneath the stars. But under the glow of today’s artificial lighting, we have lost the intimacy our ancestors once shared with the cosmos.

In Starborn , cosmologist Roberto Trotta reveals how stargazing has shaped the course of human civilization. The stars have served as our timekeepers, our navigators, our muses—they were once even our gods. How radically different would we be, Trotta also asks, if our ancestors had looked up to the night sky and seen� nothing? He pairs the history of our starstruck species with a dramatic alternate version, a world without stars where our understanding of science, art, and ourselves would have been radically altered. �

Revealing the hidden connections between astronomy and civilization, Starborn summons us to the marvelous sight that awaits us on a dark, clear night—to lose ourselves in the immeasurable vastness above.]]> 352 Roberto Trotta 1541674774 Pramit 0 to-read 3.92 Starborn: How the Stars Made Us (and Who We Would Be Without Them)
author: Roberto Trotta
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/08
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]]> Kathmandu 23152847
Closed to the outside world until 1951 and trapped in a medieval time wrap, Kathmandu's rapid modernization is an extreme version of what is happening in many traditional societies. The many layers of the city's development are reflected in the successive generations of its gods and goddesses, witches and ghosts, the comforts of caste; the ethos of aristocracy and kingship; and the lately destabilizing spirits of consumer aspiration, individuality, egalitarianism, communism and democracy.

Kathmandu follows the author's story through a decade in the city, and unravels the city's history through successive reinventions of itself. Erudite, entertaining and accessible, it is the fascinating chronicle of a unique city.]]> 463 Thomas Bell 8184005784 Pramit 0 3.79 2014 Kathmandu
author: Thomas Bell
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/23
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]]> Himalaya: A Human History 49098218
Spanning millennia, from its earliest inhabitants to the present conflicts over Tibet and Everest, Himalaya is a soaring account of resilience and conquest, discovery and plunder, oppression and enlightenment at the ‘roof of the world�.

From all around the globe, the unique and astonishing geography of the Himalaya has attracted those in search of spiritual and literal elevation: pilgrims, adventurers and mountaineers seeking to test themselves among the world’s most spectacular and challenging peaks. But far from being wild and barren, the Himalaya has throughout the ages been home to an astonishing diversity of indigenous and local cultures, as well as a crossroads for trade, and a meeting point and conflict zone for the world’s superpowers. Here Jesuit missionaries exchanged technologies with Tibetan Lamas, Mongol Khans employed Nepali craftsmen, Armenian merchants exchanged musk and gold with Mughals. Here too the East India Company grappled for dominance with China’s emperors, independent India has been locked in conflict with Mao’s Communists and their successors, and the ideological confrontation of the Cold War is now being buried beneath mass tourism and ecological transformation.
Featuring scholars and tyrants, bandits and CIA agents, go-betweens and revolutionaries, Himalaya is a panoramic, character-driven history on the grandest but also the most human scale, by far the most comprehensive yet written, encompassing geology and genetics, botany and art, and bursting with stories of courage and resourcefulness.]]> 592 Ed Douglas 1847924131 Pramit 0 3.65 Himalaya: A Human History
author: Ed Douglas
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.65
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]]> Man's War Against Nature 56808147 96 Rachel Carson 0241514452 Pramit 0 to-read 3.82 1962 Man's War Against Nature
author: Rachel Carson
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/23
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]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering: Mastering Complexity (Mit Press)]]> 22050657 408 Sanjoy Mahajan 0262526549 Pramit 0 to-read 4.38 2014 The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering: Mastering Complexity (Mit Press)
author: Sanjoy Mahajan
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn]]> 530415 Provides the reader with a style of thinking that will enhance a person's ability to function as a problem-solver of complex technical issues. Consists of a collection of stories about the author's participation in significant discoveries, relating how those discoveries came about and, most importantly, provides analysis about the thought processes and reasoning that took place as the author and his associates progressed through engineering problems.]]> 376 Richard Hamming 9056995014 Pramit 0 to-read 4.14 1996 The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn
author: Richard Hamming
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/24
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]]> <![CDATA[On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous]]> 41880609 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born � a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam � and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.]]> 246 Ocean Vuong 0525562028 Pramit 0 4.05 2019 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/23
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]]> When Breath Becomes Air 25899336
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.]]> 208 Paul Kalanithi 0812988418 Pramit 0 to-read 4.41 2016 When Breath Becomes Air
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
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date added: 2023/05/15
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]]> The Lover 275 117 Marguerite Duras Pramit 0 to-read 3.79 1984 The Lover
author: Marguerite Duras
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/25
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]]> <![CDATA[A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush]]> 118141 The New York Times]]> 247 Eric Newby 1885283172 Pramit 0 to-read 3.97 1958 A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
author: Eric Newby
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/10
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]]> Letters from a Stoic 97411 No man can live a happy life, or even a supportable life, without the study of wisdom

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC-AD 65) is one of the most famous Roman philosophers. Instrumental in guiding the Roman Empire under emperor Nero, Seneca influenced him from a young age with his Stoic principles. Later in life, he wrote Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, or Letters from a Stoic, detailing these principles in full.

Seneca’s letters read like a diary or a handbook of philosophical meditations. Often beginning with observations on daily life, the letters focus on many traditional themes of Stoic philosophy, such as the contempt of death, the value of friendship, and virtue as the supreme good.

Using Gummere’s translation from the early twentieth century, this selection of Seneca’s letters shows his belief in the austere, ethical ideals of Stoicism � teachings we can still learn from today.]]> 254 Seneca 0140442103 Pramit 0 to-read 4.33 64 Letters from a Stoic
author: Seneca
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.33
book published: 64
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life]]> 50887097 A wondrous debut from an extraordinary new voice in nonfiction, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a dark and astonishing tale of love, chaos, scientific obsession, and—possibly—even murder.

David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But the more of the hidden blueprint of life he uncovered, the harder the universe seemed to try to thwart him. His specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake—which sent more than a thousand of his discoveries, housed in fragile glass jars, plummeting to the floor. In an instant, his life’s work was shattered.

Many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world.

When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool�a cautionary tale in hubris, or denial. But as her own life slowly unraveled, she began to wonder about him. Perhaps instead he was a model for how to go on when all seemed lost. What she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality, and the world beneath her feet.

Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don’t Exist reads like a fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.]]> 225 Lulu Miller Pramit 0 to-read 4.15 2020 Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
author: Lulu Miller
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/08
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]]> The Namesake 33917 Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.

In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail � the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase � that opens whole worlds of emotion.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.

Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.]]> 304 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618485228 Pramit 0 4.01 2003 The Namesake
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town]]> 54979228 Discover insider secrets of how America's transportation system is designed, funded, and built - and how to make it work for your community

In Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, renowned speaker and author of Strong Towns Charles L. Marohn Jr. delivers an accessible and engaging exploration of America's transportation system, laying bare the reasons why it no longer works as it once did, and how to modernize transportation to better serve local communities.

You'll discover real-world examples of poor design choices and how those choices have dramatic and tragic effects on the lives of the people who use them. You'll also find case studies and examples of design improvements that have revitalized communities and improved safety.

This important book shows you:

The values of the transportation professions, how they are applied in the design process, and how those priorities differ from those of the public. How the standard approach to transportation ensures the maximum amount of traffic congestion possible is created each day, and how to fight that congestion on a budget. Bottom-up techniques for spending less and getting higher returns on transportation projects, all while improving quality of life for residents. Perfect for anyone interested in why transportation systems work - and fail to work - the way they do, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer is a fascinating insider's peek behind the scenes of America's transportation systems.]]> 258 Charles L. Marohn Jr. 1119699258 Pramit 0 4.25 2021 Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town
author: Charles L. Marohn Jr.
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/11/14
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]]> <![CDATA[World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments]]> 48615751
As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted--no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape--she was able to turn to our world's fierce and funny creatures for guidance.

"What the peacock can do," she tells us, "is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life." The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world's gifts.

Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.]]> 165 Aimee Nezhukumatathil 1571313656 Pramit 0 to-read 4.05 2020 World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
author: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/08
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]]> Afterlives 52744975
Another young man returns at the same time. Hamza was not stolen for the war, but sold into it; he has grown up at the right hand of an officer whose protection has marked him life. With nothing but the clothes on his back, he seeks only work and security � and the love of the beautiful Afiya.

As fate knots these young people together, as they live and work and fall in love, the shadow of a new war on another continent lengthens and darkens, ready to snatch them up and carry them away…]]> 288 Abdulrazak Gurnah Pramit 0 to-read 3.72 2020 Afterlives
author: Abdulrazak Gurnah
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/07/16
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]]> The Reluctant Fundamentalist 40961543
Changez is living an immigrant's dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by an elite valuation firm. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his budding romance with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore.

But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his relationship with Erica shifting. And Changez's own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.]]> 228 Mohsin Hamid Pramit 0 to-read 3.79 2007 The Reluctant Fundamentalist
author: Mohsin Hamid
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/19
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]]> Exit West 30688435
Exit West follows these characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.]]> 231 Mohsin Hamid 0735212171 Pramit 0 to-read 3.74 2017 Exit West
author: Mohsin Hamid
name: Pramit
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes]]> 181077 80 Eleanor Coerr 0698118022 Pramit 0 to-read 4.12 1977 Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
author: Eleanor Coerr
name: Pramit
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/17
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]]>