Showing titles in Church & State

Neuroscientist, philosopher, podcaster and best-selling author Sam Harris has been exploring some of the greatest questions concerning the human mind, society and the events that shape our world. Harris’ search for deeper understanding of how we think has led him to engage and exchange with some of our most brilliant and controversial contemporary minds - Daniel Kahneman, Robert Sapolsky, Anil Seth and Max Tegmark - in order to unpack and understand ideas of consciousness, free will, extremism and ethical living.

In this explosive book, Suraj Yengde, a first-generation Dalit scholar educated across continents, challenges deep-seated beliefs about caste and unpacks its many layers. He describes his gut-wrenching experiences of growing up in a Dalit basti, the multiple humiliations suffered by Dalits on a...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, read by Fred Sanders. Two Harvard professors explain the dangerous world we face today Democracies can die with a coup d'état - or they can die slowly. This happens most deceptively when in...

The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was much more than an ordinary electoral phenomenon: it brought to the fore two contrasting views of nationhood: between those who saw modern India in terms of secular republicanism and on the other hand were those who sought to blend technological...

In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding. His starting point is moral intuition - the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right.

David Headley, the American Pakistani also known as Daood Gilani, lived a double life. One day he would stroll through Central Park in his tailored Armani suit as a true New Yorker, and the next he would browse in the bazaar in Lahore wearing traditional Pakistani clothes. One day he would drink champagne at the most extravagant clubs; on another he would prostrate himself in prayer in remote Pakistan and pledge fidelity to Allah.

Occult Feminism: The Secret History of Women's Liberation dives deep into the occult roots of the movement, detailing the lives of some of its most prominent figures and the esoteric beliefs that inspired and motivated them. Since the 1970s, everything we learn about the history of the women's movement has been subject to gatekeeping by radicals who run women's studies departments in universities. But there's an entire history that has been obscured from public view.

There has never been a nation like the United States of America. Its impact on the world is unprecedented in all of human history. After two and a half centuries of existence, it is difficult to imagine what the world would be like without it. But how did it come into existence? Who has really done justice to this astonishing story? Innumerable books have been written about the American Revolution, but the definitive treatment of the full story simply does not exist—certainly not in our generation.

Longlisted for the 2020 Financial Times / McKinsey Business Book of the Year "Blood and Oil is the fascinating and highly entertaining tale of Mohammed bin Salman's rise to power. With fly-on-the-wall reporting and palace intrigue worthy of Machiavelli, it will keep you turning the pages at a...

Profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-born scholar Vali Nasr has become one of America's leading commentators on current events in the Middle East, admired and welcomed by both media and government for his "concise and coherent" analysis (Wall Street Journal). In this "smart, clear and timely" book (Washington Post), Nasr brilliantly dissects the political and theological antagonisms within Islam. He provides a unique and objective understanding of the 1,400-year bitter struggle between Shias and Sunnis, and sheds crucial light on its modern-day consequences—from the nuclear posturing of Iran's President Ahmadinejad to the recent U.S.-enabled shift toward Shia power in Iraq and Hezbollah's continued dominance in Lebanon.

What is the RSS’ imagination for India? If India becomes a Hindu Rashtra, what will be the place of Muslims and other faiths in it? How big is the RSS project of history writing? Will Hindutva override caste politics? And what is the RSS view of social issues pertaining to the changing nature of family, the rights of people with different sexual orientations and the third gender? These contentious questions are just a few of the myriad political and social issues that Sunil Ambekar, a high-ranking pracharak, analyses in his book, The RSS: Roadmaps for the 21st Century.

There was one partition of the land in 1947. Harsh Mander believes that another partition is underway in our hearts and minds. How much of this culpability lies with ordinary people? What are the responsibilities of a secular government, of a civil society, and of a progressive majority? In...

The first authorized biography of Soli Sorabjee ‘A gripping life story of a Goliath who strode the Indian legal canvass for nearly seventy years.’ – Mukul Rohatgi, former Attorney General of India ‘Superbly researched, this book by Abhinav Chandrachud is a must read. ‘ – Madhavi...

Punjab went through a politically turbulent period between 1978 and 1994, triggered by the rift between Sikhs and Nirankaris, and fuelled by the operations Blue Star, Woodrose and Black Thunder I and II. Narrated as an eyewitness account by Ramesh Inder Singh, then the district magistrate of...

When conflicts become entrenched over generations, the language of war infiltrates everyday life, concealing destruction and hardening positions. Nowhere is this truer than in the Middle East. Award-winning author Raja Shehadeh explores the politics of language and the language of politics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reflecting on the walls that they create - legal and cultural - that confine today's Palestinians just like the borders, checkpoints and so-called "Separation Barrier".

Since he was a small boy, Mosab Hassan Yousef has had an inside view of the deadly terrorist group Hamas. The oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founding member of Hamas and its most popular leader, young Mosab assisted his father for years in his political activities while being groomed to assume his legacy, politics, status...and power. But everything changed when Mosab turned away from terror and violence and embraced instead the teachings of another famous Middle East leader.

'This is the history we so badly needed' ANTONY BEEVOR 'Essential reading for understanding Asia's present' RICHARD OVERY A momentous new history of World War II in Asia. In the early twentieth century, from India to China, Western imperial powers dominated Asia. Then, in the 1930s, Japan began...

In 1871, the British enacted the Criminal Tribes Act in India, branding numerous tribes and caste groups as criminals. In This Land We Call Home, Nusrat F. Jafri traces the roots of her nomadic forebears, who belonged to one such ‘criminal’ tribe, the Bhantus from Rajasthan.This affecting...

India has taken so sharp a turn in recent years that the very centre has shifted considerably. What led to this swing? Is it possible to trace the path to this point? Is there a way back to the just, secular, inclusive vision of our Constitution-makers?This country has long been an outlier in...

Anne Catherine Emmerich was born in Germany in 1774. As a child she believed that angels, saints, and the Holy Family visited and talked with her as she worked in the fields. At twenty-four, she had her first mystic vision of the sufferings of Christ, accompanied by stigmata and bleeding as if from the crown of thorns. At twenty-nine, she became an Augustinian nun and continued to have visions and stigmata. In her visions, she recounted scenes from the life of Christ, which she seemed to have witnessed.