GREAT TELUGU MASTERPIECES - Volume 1 (1910-1947)


Book Description

This volume is perhaps the first such attempt that contains English translations of 25 of the finest Telugu short stories published between 1910 (the inception of the short story) and 1947 (Indian Independence) by noted Telugu authors such as Gurajada Appa Rao, Sripada Subrahmanya Sastry, Munimanikyam Narasimha Rao, Chalam, Kodavatiganti Kutumba Rao, etc. Between 1910 and 1947, Telugu writers touched upon topics like the freedom struggle, patriotism, human relations, corruption in the government, social reform (selling girls for money, dowry, widow remarriage, eradication of untouchability, etc.), British influence on Indian middle classes, nationalist feelings, and the oppression of rural populations by feudal landlords. This book contains 25 stories from 16 authors, with Gurajada and Sripada contributing ten stories as they were truly the pioneering writers of short stories in Telugu. The anthology touches on a wide range of themes such as social reform (untouchability, widow remarriage, etc.), rural life, middle-class psychology, women’s issues, satire, corruption, superstitions, pseudo-nationalism, etc. All the authors have a special place in the annals of Telugu literature for the early lead they took, the wide range of topics they touched and the way they popularised short stories as a literary genre. The stories help the readers relate to the times before independence in the Telugu states, both urban and rural. These eminent writers observed the society around them through different lenses and their narration is spellbinding.







The Mists of Rāmañña


Book Description

Scholars have long accepted the belief that a Theravada Buddhist Mon kingdom, Rāmaññadesa, flourished in coastal Lower Burma until it was conquered in 1057 by King Aniruddha of Pagan—which then became, in essence, the new custodian and repository of Mon culture in the Upper Burmese interior. This scenario, which Aung-Thwin calls the "Mon Paradigm," has circumscribed much of the scholarship on early Burma and significantly shaped the history of Southeast Asia for more than a century. Now, in a masterful reassessment of Burmese history, Michael Aung-Thwin reexamines the original contemporary accounts and sources without finding any evidence of an early Theravada Mon polity or a conquest by Aniruddha. The paradigm, he finds, cannot be sustained. How, when, and why did the Mon Paradigm emerge? Aung-Thwin meticulously traces the paradigm's creation to the merging of two temporally, causally, and contextually unrelated Mon and Burmese narratives, which were later synthesized in English by colonial officials and scholars. Thus there was no single originating source, only a late and mistaken conflation of sources. The conceptual, methodological, and empirical ramifications of these findings are significant. The prevalent view that state-formation began in the maritime regions of Southeast Asia with trade and commerce rather than in the interior with agriculture must now be reassessed. In addition, a more rigorous look at the actual scope and impact of a romanticized Mon culture in the region is required. Other issues important to the field of early Burma and Southeast Asian studies, including the process of "Indianization," the characterization of "classical" states, and the advent and spread of Theravada Buddhism, are also directly affected by Aung-Thwin’s work. Finally, it provides a geo-political, cultural, and economic alternative to what has become an ethnic interpretation of Burma’s history. An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher.




The Emperor of All Maladies


Book Description

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.




National Union Catalog


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Youcat English


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Introduces young readers to Catholic beliefs as expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.




The Republic of India


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Unruly Waters


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From a MacArthur "Genius," a bold new perspective on the history of Asia, highlighting the long quest to tame its waters Asia's history has been shaped by her waters. In Unruly Waters, historian Sunil Amrith reimagines Asia's history through the stories of its rains, rivers, coasts, and seas -- and of the weather-watchers and engineers, mapmakers and farmers who have sought to control them. Looking out from India, he shows how dreams and fears of water shaped visions of political independence and economic development, provoked efforts to reshape nature through dams and pumps, and unleashed powerful tensions within and between nations. Today, Asian nations are racing to construct hundreds of dams in the Himalayas, with dire environmental impacts; hundreds of millions crowd into coastal cities threatened by cyclones and storm surges. In an age of climate change, Unruly Waters is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Asia's past and its future.




Language and Society in South Asia


Book Description

During the past two decades there has been a significant amount of research and publication concerning the sociolinguistics of South Asian languages. Language and Society in South Asia is the first major attempt to assess the impact of this new literature. It exposits the methodological and theoretical assumptions of sociolinguistic descriptions of south Asian languages, and contrasts them with the assumptions of earlier characterizations of these languages. An important feature of this book is its detailed examination of numerous schools of linguistic analysis within which most past descriptive work on South Asian languages has been carried out. This is done in language accessible both to the professional linguist and to non-linguists interested in social aspects of language use in South Asia. Among the topics treated in this book are traditional taxonomies of South Asian languages, South Asia as a linguistic area, social dialectology, bi- and multilingualism in South Asia, pidginization, creolization, and South Asian English, ethnographic semantics, and the ethnography of speaking. The work also contains an extensive bibliography of the scholarly literature pertinent to the study of South Asian languages in their social contexts.