Nine Hours to Rama


Book Description

Story in the form of a novel of the assassination of India's saintly leader, Mahatma Gandhi, in January, 1948.




The Lotus and the Robot


Book Description




Saul Bass


Book Description

This is the first book to be published on one of the greatest American designers of the 20th Century, who was as famous for his work in film as for his corporate identity and graphic work. With more than 1,400 illustrations, many of them never published before and written by the leading design historian Pat Kirkham, this is the definitive study that design and film enthusiasts have been eagerly anticipating. Saul Bass (1920-1996) created some of the most compelling images of American post-war visual culture. Having extended the remit of graphic design to include film titles, he went on to transform the genre. His best known works include a series of unforgettable posters and title sequences for films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Otto Preminger's The Man With The Golden Arm and Anatomy of a Murder. He also created some of the most famous logos and corporate identity campaigns of the century, including those for major companies such as AT&T, Quaker Oats, United Airlines and Minolta. His wife and collaborator, Elaine, joined the Bass office in the late 1950s. Together they created an impressive series of award-winning short films, including the Oscar-winning Why Man Creates, as well as an equally impressive series of film titles, ranging from Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus in the early 1960s to Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear and Casino in the 1990s. Designed by Jennifer Bass, Saul Bass's daughter and written by distinguished design historian Pat Kirkham who knew Saul Bass personally, this book is full of images from the Bass archive, providing an in depth account of one of the leading graphic artists of the 20th century.







From Your Gods to Our Gods


Book Description

The global world debates secularism, freedom of belief, faith-based norms, the state's arbitration of religious conflicts, and the place of the sacred in the public sphere. In facing these issues, Britain, India, and South Africa stand out as unique laboratories. They have greatly influenced the rest of the world. As single countries and together as a whole, the three have moved from the colonial clash of antagonistic religions (of your gods) to an era when it has become impossible to dissociate your god from my god. Today both belong to the same blurred reality of our gods. Through a narrative account of British, South African, and Indian court cases from 1857 to 2009, the author draws an unconventional history of the process leading from the encounter with the gods of the other to the forging of a postmodern, common, and global religion. Across ages, borders, faiths, and laws, the three countries have experienced the ambivalent interaction of society, politics, and beliefs. Hence the lesson the world might learn from them: our gods promise an idealized purity, but they can only become real in the everyday creation of mixed identities, hybrid deities, and shared fears and hopes.




Nehru's India


Book Description

A pivotal figure in India's independence movement, the country's first Prime Minister, and an active politician for most of his life, Jawaharlal Nehru was also a renowned writer and scholar. Nehru's India brings together twenty-one representative speeches from Jawaharlal Nehru's 'Prime Ministerial years'. Through these speeches, selected and introduced by Mushirul Hasan, we get to see the development of Nehru's vision for free India and the actual process of transforming the blueprint into reality. They are an early articulation of government position and policies vis-a-vis infrastructural development, the roles of government and business, the differing requirements of communities and languages, and the inseparability of science and ethics. While some often reflect the opposition and struggle Nehru faced in the implementation of these policies, others help reveal the person behind the politician and administrator. Mushirul Hasan's delightful introduction cleverly knits the selections together.




Nine Lives


Book Description

A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet - then spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the violence by hand printing the best prayer flags in India. A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve herself to death. Nine people, nine lives; each one taking a different religious path, each one an unforgettable story. William Dalrymple delves deep into the heart of a nation torn between the relentless onslaught of modernity and the ancient traditions that endure to this day. LONGLISTED FOR THE BBC SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE




L'Americain


Book Description

Before television, the great picture magazines captured world events for millions of readers. They sent correspondents and photojournalists to the ends of the earth to record history in the making. Among this elite was the photographer, John Launois. During the 1960s and 1970s, the final decades of the “golden age of photojournalism,” John Launois blossomed as one of the most resourceful, inventive, prolific, highly paid, and widely traveled photojournalists at work during that period. Launois made himself the master of the deeply researched photo essay, and his published work appeared in Life, The Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, Look, Rolling Stone, Paris Match, London’s Sunday Times, and many other American, European, and Asian publications. This is his story told in his own words: from his youth amid the poverty and terror of German-occupied France during World War II when he dreamed of coming to America, to his lean “noodle years” in the Far East as he struggled to master his craft, to his years in America as a successful photographer and globetrotting adventurer. It was during this time that he recorded some of the most iconic images of the period—presidents, the Beatles, Malcolm X, wars, riots, and natural disasters. He also writes very candidly of the terrible toll the demands of his work imposed on his family, his loves, and himself. Through it all, he mingled with the rich, powerful, and downtrodden alike, always marveling that he had come so far.




Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan


Book Description

Bhutto, Wolpert writes, was a charismatic and contradictory man, a microcosmic reflection of Pakistan itself - a nation bond out of division with India which later fell victim to its own internal split with the creation of Bangladesh. Wolpert follows him from his privileged youth in British-ruled India, to his years as a student at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley (where he sported a thin moustache, shiny two-tone shoes, and proved a keen, if rakish, fraternity brother), to Oxford and back to Pakistan. Bhutto climbed to the heights of power with amazing swiftness, winning a seat in the central Cabinet of Pakistan at the unprecedented age of thirty. Wolpert weaves Pakistan's turbulent politics and repeated wars with India together with Bhutto's ambitious maneuvering, tracing his rise to Foreign Minister, the founding of his own political movement, and finally leadership of the nation.




Saul Bass


Book Description

Food is a significant part of our daily lives and can be one of the most telling records of a time and place. Our meals -- from what we eat, to how we prepare it, to how we consume it -- illuminate our culture and history. As a result, cookbooks present a unique opportunity to analyze changing foodways and can yield surprising discoveries about society's tastes and priorities. In Kentucky's Cookbook Heritage, John van Willigen explores the state's history through its changing food culture, beginning with Lettice Bryan's The Kentucky Housewife (originally published in 1839). Considered one of the earliest regional cookbooks, The Kentucky Housewife includes pre--Civil War recipes intended for use by a household staff instead of an individual cook, along with instructions for serving the family. Van Willigen also shares the story of the original Aunt Jemima -- the advertising persona of Nancy Green, born in Montgomery County, Kentucky -- who was one of many African American voices in Kentucky culinary history. Kentucky's Cookbook Heritage is a journey through the history of the commonwealth, showcasing the shifting priorities and innovations of the times. Analyzing the historical importance of a wide range of publications, from the nonprofit and charity cookbooks that flourished at the end of the twentieth century to the contemporary cookbook that emphasizes local ingredients, van Willigen provides a valuable perspective on the state's social history.