THE CAUSES OF INEQUALITY - REVIEW OF ACEMOGLU AND ROBINSON'S "WHY NATIONS FAIL"

Renowned economists, Daron Acemoglu (of MIT) and James A Robinson (now of University of Chicago) have written a sweeping account of world history for the general audience - Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (2012). Their main objective is to answer the questions: Why is there inequality in the world? Why are some countries rich and some poor?

AN INDICTMENT OF COMMUNISM - REVIEW OF ARCHIE BROWN'S "THE RISE AND FALL OF COMMUNISM"

Archie Brown, a British political scientist and historian and emeritus professor at University of Oxford had been studying Communism for forty five years before he started to write the massive The Rise and Fall of Communism (2010) which won the 2010 W. J. M. Mackenzie Prize for Best Political Science Book of the Year.

MATHEMATICAL LOGIC IN COMICS - REVIEW OF DOXIADIS AND PAPADIMITRIOU'S "LOGICOMIX"

The graphic novel Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth (2009) by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H Papadimitriou is a unique attempt in literature: mathematical ideas transmitted through the medium of the comic book.

THE OTHER FACE OF WINSTON CHURCHILL - REVIEW OF MADHUSHREE MUKERJEE'S "CHURCHILL'S SECRET WAR"

Winston Churchill is hailed as one of the greatest statesmen of the last century. A fiery and inspiring orator and a vehement hater of Nazism, he lead his country to victory in World War II. While Churchill's disdain for India and Indians is well known, it will come as a shock to many that he was largely responsible for the death of close to three million Indians in the 1940s. This unknown side of Churchill and his colleagues is brilliantly brought out in journalist Madhushree Mukerjee's Churchill's Secret War (2010).

A HISTORY OF THE DIGITAL AGE - REVIEW OF WALTER ISAACSON'S "THE INNOVATORS"

Walter Isaacson has the rare knack of turning out instant classics. His Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007) was a superlative study of one of the world's renowned scientists while his Steve Jobs (2011) was a memorable portrayal of one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time. In The Innovators:How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014), Isaacson moves from studying single personalities to a team of pioneers who were instrumental in ushering in the information age.

THE PREVALENCE OF FORCE - REVIEW OF DAVID GRAEBER'S "DEBT"

In his book Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011), David Graeber proves to be an original and provocative thinker. Graeber is a professor of anthropology and described as an anarchist (I suppose he is an economist of the Left while Murray Rothbard, the Austrian economist would be an anarchist of the Right). Graber was one of the organizers of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

INDIAN OCEAN STRATEGY – REVIEW OF ROBERT D KAPLAN’S “MONSOON”

Foreign policy experts have paid a lot of attention to Russia, China and the Arab states in recent times. In his book Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power (2010), Robert D Kaplan, a security expert at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, argues that these people are sniffing up the wrong tree. The next big area that is poised to capture American geopolitical attention is the Indian Ocean.

FRAGILE STATE – REVIEW OF M J AKBAR’S “TINDERBOX”

I remember reading, back in my college days, M J Akbar’s India: The Siege Within (1985) with a sense of discovery and excitement. Akbar came across as a stylish writer and I learnt many things about my country’s history from that book. His recent work is Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan (2011) in which he begins the history of Pakistan right from Mahmud of Ghazni’s plunder of Somanath in 1026 and even earlier.

OF AFRICAN BELIEFS: REVIEW OF V S NAIPAUL’S “THE MASQUE OF AFRICA”

V. S. Naipaul came from a remote corner of the earth, a literary abyss, and captured the attention of the world. He wrote a couple of novels – The Mystic Masseur (1957) and Miguel Street (1959) – focusing on his early years in Trinidad. If he had carried on in that vein, he could have become an exemplary tragic-comic storyteller like R K Narayan. Instead he resolved to make the world his stage and strode on it like a colossus, culminating in his Nobel Prize in 2001.

FROM GONDWANA TO GURGAON – REVIEW OF SANJEEV SANYAL’S “LAND OF THE SEVEN RIVERS”

I remember how amazed I was when I first saw an aerial shot of the Taj Mahal. It offered an entirely different perspective, a more provocative and panoramic one, than the static frontal view. In a similar way, Sanjeev Sanyal’s Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India’s Geography offers a fresh view of India’s contours over the ages.