Kargil

Twenty-one riveting stories from the battlefield about how India's highest military honor was won. The Brave takes you to the hearts and minds of India's bravest soldiers, all of whom won the Param Vir Chakra, India's greatest military honor. With access to the Army, families, and comrades-in-arms of the soldiers, Rachna Bisht Rawat paints the most vivid portrait of these men and their extraordinary deeds.

In February 1999, Pakistani Army personnel, disguised as jehadi militants, infiltrated mountainous Kargil and occupied key vantage points. Their intrusion triggered off a limited war between the world's newest nuclear states. It was a bitter battle, and one that throws up important lessons for India's defence preparedness, as also its responses to flare-ups such as this. This book is also a reminder of the unparalleled heroism that was on display during those grim weeks, heroism that has become a benchmark for bravery. 

First-hand reports of the most riveting anti-terror encounters in the wake of the 2016 surgical strikes, the men who hunted terrorists in a magical Kashmir forest where day turns to night, a pair of young Navy men who gave their all to save their entire submarine crew, the Air Force commando who wouldn't sleep until he had avenged his buddies, the tax babu who found his soul in a terrifying Special Forces assault on Pakistani terrorists, and many more. Their own stories, in their own words. Or of those who were with them in their final moments.

The Army major who led the legendary September 2016 surgical strikes on terror launch pads across the LoC; a soldier who killed 11 terrorists in 10 days; a Navy officer who sailed into a treacherous port to rescue hundreds from an exploding war; a bleeding Air Force pilot who found himself flying a jet that had become a screaming fireball...their own accounts or of those who were with them in their final moments. 

On 20 October 1962, high in the Himalayas, on the banks of the fast-flowing Nam Ka Chu, over 400 Indian soldiers were massacred, and the valley was overrun by soldiers of China's People's Liberation Army. Over the course of the next month, nearly 4,000 soldiers were killed on both sides, and the Indian army experienced its worst defeat ever. The conflict (war was never formally declared) ended because China announced a unilateral ceasefire on 21 November and halted its hitherto unhindered advance across NEFA and Ladakh.

India's armed forces play a key role in protecting the country and occupy a special place in the Indian people's hearts, yet standard accounts of contemporary Indian history rarely have a military dimension. In India's Wars, serving Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam seeks to rectify that oversight by giving India's military exploits their rightful place in history.  

As Khushwant Singh wrote in the preface to the hardbound edition published in 1990 of this true account of Mohanlal Bhaskar's mission to find out about Pakistan's nuclear plans: 'He was betrayed by one of his colleagues, presumbly a double agent, and had to face the music on his own. The interrogation, which was done by the army and police, included torture of the worst kind imaginable. Many of his comrades went insane or ended their own lives.'

Sometime in 2016, a series of dialogues took place which set out to find a meeting ground, even if only an illusion, between A.S. Dulat and Asad Durrani. One was a former chief of RAW, India's external intelligence agency, the other of ISI, its Pakistani counterpart. As they could not meet in their home countries, the conversations, guided by journalist Aditya Sinha, took place in cities like Istanbul, Bangkok and Kathmandu.  

In his first book, India’s Wars, Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam sought to give independent India’s military exploits up to 1971 their rightful place in history. At the same time, it was also a tribute to the valour of the men and women in olive green, white and blue. In Full Spectrum, he takes the story forward by recounting in detail how the armed forces have dealt with military conflicts, insurgencies and unconventional warfare from 1972 to the present day. 

Bhagat Singh is a name that became synonymous with revolution in India’s struggle for Independence. This young boy brought about a change in the way people thought about freedom. He was well read and fought extensively for rights – his own, his comrades’ and his countrymen’s. This book is a collection of 18 of his valued writings from within the walls of prison and outside it, which show us the resolve in his words, and the bravery in his acts subsequently.

Drawing on previously unpublished eyewitness accounts, prizewinning historian Donald L. Miller has written what critics are calling one of the most powerful accounts of warfare ever published. Here are the horror and heroism of World War II in the words of the men who fought it, the journalists who covered it, and the civilians who were caught in its fury. Miller gives us an up-close, deeply personal view of a war that was more savagely fought - and whose outcome was in greater doubt - than one might imagine. This is the war that Americans on the home front would have read about had they had access to previously censored testimony.

Darkness engulfs the Indian subcontinent. The 17th century is destined to be an era of brutal wars, incessant oppression and physical and spiritual carnage in the name of religion. Shivaji, a warrior and thinker far ahead of his times, rises and renders a rousing dream - respect and dignity for human life, economic equity and empowerment. Destiny does not favour him; he faces terribile odds - a fallen and defeated populace, the might of the Mughal Empire, and naval supremacy of the Western powers.

Srinagar in the winter of 1989 was an eerie ghost town witnessing the beginnings of a war dance. The dam burst the night JKLF boys were freed in exchange for the release of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. As Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had predicted, the government's caving in emboldened many Kashmiris into thinking that azaadi was possible. 'The price we will have to pay' were Farooq's prophetic words.

In Mossad, authors MichaelBar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal take us behind the closed curtain with riveting, eye-opening, boots-on-the-ground accounts of the most dangerous, most crucial missions in the agency's 60-year history.

The 19th century was an exciting time of initiative and enterprise around the world. If John D. Rockefeller was creating unimagined wealth in the United States that he would put to the service of the nation, a Parsi family with humble roots was doing the same in India. The Tatas is a tribute to a line of visionaries who have a special place in the hearts and minds of ordinary Indians. Written by seasoned journalist Girish Kuber, this is also the only book that tells the complete Tata story spanning almost 200 years.