Turning Points by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam It was like any other day on the Anna University campus in Chennai. I had delivered a lecture 'Vision to Mission' and the session got extended from one hour to two. I had lunch with a group of research students and went back to class. As I was returning to my rooms in the evening the vice-chancellor, Prof. A. Kalanidhi, fell in step with me. Someone had been frantically trying to get in touch with me through the day, he said. Indeed, the phone was ringing when I entered the room. When I answered, a voice at the other end said, 'The prime minister wants to talk with you...' Some months earlier, I had left my post as principal scientific adviser to the government of India, a Cabinet-level post, to return to teaching. Now, as I spoke to the PM, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, my life was set for an unexpected change. Turning Points takes up the incredible Kalam story from where Wings of Fire left off. It brings together details from his career and presidency that are not generally known as he speaks out for the first time on certain points of controversy. It offers insight not only into an extraordinary personality but also a vision of how a country with a great heritage can become great in accomplishment, skills and abilities through effort, perseverance and confidence. It is a continuing saga, above all, of a journey, individual and collective, that will take India to 2020 and beyond as a developed nation.Read More...Hide Pages: 176
Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger by Nigel Slater 'My mother is scraping a piece of burned toast out of the kitchen window, a crease of annoyance across her forehead. This is not an occasional occurrence. My mother burns the toast as surely as the sun rises each morning.' 'Toast' is Nigel Slater's award-winning biography of a childhood remembered through food. Whether recalling his mother's surprisingly good rice pudding, his father's bold foray into spaghetti and his dreaded Boxing Day stew, or such culinary highlights as Arctic Roll and Grilled Grapefruit (then considered something of a status symbol in Wolverhampton), this remarkable memoir vividly recreates daily life in 1960s suburban England. Likes and dislikes, aversions and sweet-toothed weaknesses form a fascinating backdrop to Nigel Slater's incredibly moving and deliciously evocative portrait of childhood, adolescence and sexual awakening.Read More...Hide Pages: 247
Growing Up Bin Laden by Jean Sasson In their own words, Osama Bin Laden?s first wife Najwa and son Omar share the astonishing story of the man they knew ? or thought they knew. Growing Up Bin Laden tells the story of a young girl who married her gentle and kindly first-cousin, enjoying a happy early marriage with the groom of her choice. But as world events thrust her husband into a frenzy of militant activities, his once pleasing behaviour is altered; and Najwa and her innocent children?s lives become a maze of escaping from one country to another.
Osama?s fourth-born son, Omar ? who wanted nothing but his father?s love, describes his early years, life with his father in Afghanistan and his eventual escape to Saudi Arabia. Together, their powerful story as mother and son give us an extraordinary view of a man hated by so many, yet both loved and feared by his family, including:
Osama?s disapproval of modern conveniences, including electricity and medicine
Osama?s plan to toughen up his sons by taking them into the desert without food or water
Omar?s horror at the murder of a boy his own age by members of a jihadist group living among them in the Sudan
What happened in the bin Laden home in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on the morning of September 11, 2001; Omar?s surprise phone call from his mother who escaped from Afghanistan only two days before the New York terrorist attack.Read More...Hide Pages: 420
Should you finally forgive the one who hurt you the most and would you find the courage to apologize to the person you wronged? Who would you remember as your life?s greatest love. Could you recognize what you are truly grateful for.
Jim Moret didn?t fully understand the answers to those questions until he was literally a day away from ending his own life. This veteran television broadcaster and interviewer turns the camera on himself, taking the reader on an intimate journey. He moves beyond depression, tragedy, and self-doubt and grapples with his greatest decision: not simply whether to live but how to live.
When Katherine Russell Rich was thirty-two, a newly divorced, high-powered magazine editor living a glamorous life in New York City, her ten-year (and still counting) ordeal with cancer began. Soon she was bald, scrambled, and living in two worlds simultaneously: the world.
Alternately wise and wise-cracking, Rich serves up vignettes from the surreal world only the ill know. Here is a woman who has been brought to her knees by disease several times, only to get up and learn to fly.
One of the great icons of our time, Khushwant Singh, 95, is a man of contradictions. An agnostic who's well-versed in the holy scriptures; a vocal champion of free speech who supported the Emergency; a dirty old man who sees the world in a grain of sand and beauty in a wild flower.
Born in 1915 in pre-Partition Punjab, Khushwant Singh has been witness to almost all the major events in modern Indian history and has known most of the figures who have shaped it. In a career spanning over six decades as writer, editor and journalist, his views have been provocative and controversial, but they have also been profound, deeply perceptive and always compelling. Khushwant Singh has never been less than honest.
The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story by A. Revathi We got stared at a lot. People asked out loudly some out of curiosity, others out of malice whether we were men or women or number nines or devadasis. Several men made bold to touch us, on our backs, on our shoulders. Some attempted to grab our breasts. Original or duplicate they shouted and hooted. At such moments I felt despair and wondered if there would ever be a way for us to live with dignity and make a decent living.
Revathi was born a boy, but felt and behaved like a girl. In telling her life story, Revathi evokes marvelously the deep unease of being in the wrong body that plagued her from childhood. To be true to herself, to escape the constant violence visited upon her by her family and community, the village-born Revathi ran away to Delhi to join a house of hijras. Her life became an incredible series of dangerous physical and emotional journeys to become a woman and to find love.
Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert At the end of her bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who?d been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. (Both were survivors of previous horrific divorces. Enough said.)
But providence intervened one day in the form of the United States government, which?after unexpectedly detaining Felipe at an American border crossing?gave the couple a choice: they could either get married, or Felipe would never be allowed to enter the country again. Having been effectively sentenced to wed, Gilbert tackled her fears of marriage by delving into this topic completely, trying with all her might to discover through historical research, interviews, and much personal reflection what this stubbornly enduring old institution actually is. Told with Gilbert?s trademark wit, intelligence and compassion, Committed attempts to "turn on all the lights" when it comes to matrimony, frankly examining questions of compatibility, infatuation, fidelity, family tradition, social expectations, divorce risks and humbling responsibilities.
Gilbert's memoir is ultimately a clear-eyed celebration of love with all the complexity and consequence that real love, in the real world, actually entails.
Picasso's War by Russel Martin On 26 April 1937, the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain was bombed by Hitler's Luftwaffe on behalf of Francisco Franco as he waged a bloody civil war. Twenty-four hours later, the village lay in ruins, its population decimated. This act of terror - the first large-scale attack against civilians in modern warfare - outraged the world, and one man in particular. Pablo Picasso, an expatriate living in Paris, responded to the devastation in his homeland by beginning work on GUERNICA, a painting many consider the greatest artwork of the twentieth century. Intermingling themes of politics, art, war and morality, and featuring some of the twentieth century's most memorable and infamous figures, Russell Martin follows this renowned masterpiece across decades and continents. From Europe to America and, finally, back to Spain, PICASSO'S WAR sheds light on the conflict that was an ominous prelude to World War II and delivers an unforgettable portrait of a genius whose visionary statement about the horror and terrible wounds of war still resonates today.Read More...Hide Pages: 274
Lance Armstrong: A Biography by Bill Gutman With unwavering dedication,courage and strength, Lance armstrong has overcome incredible obstacles to become the greatest cyclist of all time-and an international celebrity.
IN this newly updated biography,ride with Lance through the uphill battles,twists, and triumphs that has marked his career.On July 24,2005, Armstrong retired from professional cycling.But his work is far from over.Read More...Hide Pages: 175
Attorney Gail Connor is on top of the world. She's engaged to the man of her dreams, criminal lawyer Anthony Quintana; they've bought the house of their dreams in beautiful Coral Gables; and Gail finally has her dream job-- her own private law practice. But then her 11-year-old daughter Karen starts receiving odd, hangup phone calls and creepy notes and photos in the mail. Could it be Gail's jealous ex-husband Dave? A disgruntled former client? Someone from Anthony's shadowy past? While Anthony and Dave clash violently over how to protect Gail's daughter, the stalker closes in. Then Karen is abducted, and Gail's world is shattered. Nothing matters now-- not her success, her wedding, her new home, her new practice-- not without her daughter. As they track Karen's tormentor, they must walk that dangerous line between action and caution, and deliver justice without fail...and without mercy.
A Death in Vienna
A Death in Vienna by Daniel Silva
Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is sent to Vienna to authenticate a painting, but the real object of his search becomes something else entirely: to find out the truth about the photograph that has turned his world upside down. It is the face of the unnamed man who brutalized his mother in the last days of World War II, during the Death March from Auschwitz. But is it really the same one? If so, who is he? How did he escape punishment? Where is he now?
Fueled by an intensity he has not felt in years, Allon cautiously begins to investigate, but the more layers he strips away, the greater the evil that is revealed, a web stretching across sixty years and thousands of lives. Soon, the quest for one monster becomes the quest for many. And the monsters are stirring . . .
Filled with sharply etched characters and prose, and a plot of astonishing intricacy, this is an uncommonly intelligent thriller by one of our very best writers.
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
In this sequel to Larsson's 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'm, Lisabeth Salander is back only she is twice as unorthodox and dangerous to know. As good as its predecessor this is a book you cannot put down.
