Gupta’s book, Mind Without Fear, has recently hit the stores.

Is Rajat Gupta indeed the ‘unluckiest man in the world’?

Rajaratnam had been under federal investigation for some time and his calls were being wire-tapped.

28 Jun 2019 1:52 AM

In Michael Ellis’ (Britain’s arts minister) words, ‘the trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover captured public attention in 1960.

Forbidden to love, forbidden to leave

The case was heard by a high court judge, Sir Lawrence Byrne, with his wife Lady Dorothy Byrne sitting beside him, permitted in those days.

14 Jun 2019 2:13 AM

Three-time F1 champ faced death and lived to tell the tale

Delhi had been a previous world book capital in 2003 and our meeting was held on the sidelines of the Bogota Book Fair.

31 May 2019 1:47 AM

The Mahabharata By Meera Uberoi, Primus Books pp 386, Rs 295

Plurality tradition flows from epics

A text like the Mahabharata will have to be understood in the specific cultural and historical context in which it was narrated and written.

17 May 2019 1:14 AM

At school, teachers have the advantage of dealing with young, formative minds full of inquiry and curiosity.

The quests that bind the teacher and the taught

The impact that great teachers have on their students in schools, colleges and even universities is remarkable.

03 May 2019 1:51 AM

There was a time when you didn’t have to step out of the train to get books, the books came to you! Almost all long-distance trains, journeys of two nights and more, on trunk routes, had a travelling library on the train.

A ticket to read: The joy of reading in one’s travels

As far as books are concerned, the e-book revolution has converted a section of readers who only read from a device and not from print.

19 Apr 2019 12:14 AM

Dhanesh Jain (1939-2019). (Photo: Dinesh Sinha)

Goodbye Dhanesh Jain, Ratna Sagar’s gentle giant

The received wisdom then and even now was that return on investment was better in textbook publishing and best in school textbooks.

05 Apr 2019 1:12 AM

Amartya Sen, who is the author of Reason before Identity.

How often do we place ‘reason’ before ‘identity’?

A lot of innovative ideas were thrown up but the allotted time was over before the mike could come to me.

29 Mar 2019 12:54 AM

Philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who helped publish Pasternak’s greatest work.

When Dr Zhivago was smuggled out of Russia

In reality, the book was Berlin’s critique of Tolstoy and his view of history.

08 Mar 2019 12:29 AM

Rightfully, English is not only an international language now but people of other countries in the Commonwealth and elsewhere have adopted it as their official language.

How the OED became ubiquitous in Indian homes

English dictionaries can broadly be divided into two broad categories — the vocabulary dictionaries and the dictionaries of English usage.

22 Feb 2019 1:54 AM

There’s a Perumal Murugan in all of us

The keynote address by the Assamese writer Dhruba Jyoti Borah underscored that literature must be free from any kind of control.

08 Feb 2019 1:18 AM

While the Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER) by the NGO Pratham among rural children makes for depressing reading each year, the learning outcomes of the children enrolled in CBSE schools were none too good either.

Why we need a good alternative to the board exams

Over the years, there have been reams written on what ails our school educational system and what needs to be done by way of reform.

25 Jan 2019 1:36 AM

A library can be a boon for Afghanistan’s children

The history of imperial conquests shows that one of the first places of attack of the invading Army is the library.

11 Jan 2019 12:50 AM

In Shillong, friends at a time of conflict

The agitation against illegal foreign immigrants in Assam in the 1970s had its echoes in Shillong as well.

28 Dec 2018 12:33 AM

In referring to hot dogs, the term “dog” is a reference to the sausage but not to its contents

No more flogging a dead horse

Hamzah believes that the increased awareness of vegan issues will filter through consciousness to produce new modes of expression.

14 Dec 2018 6:30 AM

The brother wanted Malcolm now to return the book and in turn, had brought the book to Bartlett.

Gilkey, whose love for books became an obsession

Gilkey committed his first crime at the age of nine or 10 where he quietly shoplifted a baseball catcher’s mitt.

30 Nov 2018 1:03 AM

Lynne was speaking of hand-sellers in bookshops which exist in a defined space but there used to be hand-sellers of books who sometimes could not or did not have a bookshop to operate from.

‘Book hand-sellers are as rare as ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas’

The values inherent in books are not immediately discernible and it requires a book-lover to discover them.

16 Nov 2018 12:40 AM

The making of the Oxford English Dictionary

Another new word is the adjective “bongga,” which means extravagant, flamboyant, impressive, stylish or excellent.

02 Nov 2018 12:47 AM

Queen Elizabeth II speaking to Sridhar Balan at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi in 1997.

Discovering the Queen’s love for books

One of the highlights in the Queen’s itinerary was the inauguration of the Indo-British Participation and Summit Meeting at Pragati Maidan.

12 Oct 2018 12:26 AM

Wanted: A Gawande to govern healthcare

Gawande says all learned occupations have a definition of professionalism - a code of conduct.

28 Sep 2018 1:21 AM

Sridhar Balan