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North to South: Grand Tour of India

READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

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Enrich your travels with reading! Here's a hand-picked list prepared for your journey in conjunction with the book experts at Longitude.

Item EXIDA285. Buy these 3 items as a set for $44 including shipping, 20% off the retail price.
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Mughal India, Splendours of the Peacock Throne

by Valerie Berinstain | Paul Bahn

• HISTORY
• 1998
• PAPER
• 159 PAGES

This illustrated pocket guide presents the history, culture and splendor of the Mughal court and its celebrated architecture in hundreds of archival photographs and drawings. (IDA50, $15.95)

Travelers' Tales India

by James O'Reilly | Larry Habegger

• ANTHOLOGY
• 2004
• PAPER
• 496 PAGES

A collection of 45 descriptive and thought-provoking short excerpts on Indian life and culture, including contributions from Rushdie, Naipaul and Dalrymple, plus some valuable excerpts from books long out of print. (IDA05, $19.95)

India Map

by ITMB

• 2009
• MAP

The most detailed shaded relief map (at a scale of 1:2,100,000) of India available. (IDA18, $12.95)

 

Also Recommended

Culture Smart! India

by Becky Stephen

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2010
• PAPER
• 168 PAGES

A concise, well-illustrated guide to both social and business customs in India. (IDA298, $9.95)

Eyewitness Guide Delhi, Agra and Jaipur

by Anuradha Chaturvedi

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2010
• PAPER
• 320 PAGES

With chapters on Taj Mahal, Amber Fort Palace, Keoladeo Ghana National Park, Red Fort and dozens of other highlights for the traveler, this compact, gorgeously illustrated guide to Delhi and its environs features 900 color photographs, maps and site plans. (IDA151, $25.00)

Lonely Planet India Phrasebook

by Omkar Koul

• LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS
• 2008
• PAPER
• 398 PAGES

A handy palm-sized guide. (IDA538, $10.99)

Love Bengaluru

by Fiona Caulfield

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2008
• PAPER
• 132 PAGES

This rather remarkable, hand-crafted book, with covers of locally woven cloth or khadi, is a loving, personal guide to singular shops and spas, restaurants, escapes and experiences in and around the city. 2nd edition. (IDA359, $50.00)

Love Delhi

by Fiona Caulfield

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2010
• BOXED
• 166 PAGES

Packaged in very fashionable locally woven cloth, this beautifully made, discerning guide captures the soul of the city, pointing with authority to neighborhoods, shops, markets, restaurants and attractions. A labor of love by the Bangalore-based Fiona Caulfield and friends. Third edition. (IDA403, $50.00)

Love Mumbai

by Fiona Caulfield

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2008
• BOXED
• 160 PAGES

This beautifully made, affectionate guide, packaged in its own satchel of locally woven cloth or khadi and printed on hand-made paper, captures the soul of the city, pointing with authority to neighborhoods, shops, markets, restaurants and attractions. 3rd Edition. (IDA389, $50.00)

City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

by William Dalrymple

• CULTURAL PORTRAIT
• 2003
• PAPER
• 350 PAGES
• FAVORITE

Dalrymple infectiously interweaves his own experiences over a year in Delhi with the art, architecture, history and literature of the city. (IDA06, $16.00)

In Spite of the Gods, The Strange Rise of Modern India

by Edward Luce

• HISTORY
• 2008
• PAPER
• 346 PAGES

As the world's largest democracy and a rising international economic power, India has long been heralded for its great strides in technology and trade. Yet it is also plagued by poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and a vast array of other social and economic issues. Luce tackles the challenges and reality of the world's largest democracy with insight and balance in this portrait of a nation in transition. (IDA349, $16.00)

India

by Stanley Wolpert

• HISTORY
• 2009
• PAPER
• 281 PAGES

Reflections on India -- religion and philosophy, art, culture, and politics -- by the dean of its American historians: beautifully written, and provocative as well as evocative. (IDA04, $24.95)

India Unveiled

by Robert Arnett

• CULTURAL PORTRAIT
• 2007
• HARD COVER
• 215 PAGES

A celebration of the people, landscapes and traditional culture of India, organized regionally and featuring 268 beautiful color photographs. It's a revealing, insightful portrait of the country combining history, geography and travelogue. (IDA107, $55.00)

May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons, A Journey Among the Women of India

by Elisabeth Bumiller

• CULTURAL PORTRAIT
• 1991
• PAPER
• 220 PAGES

A wonderfully written and fascinating portrayal of Indian women from Bollywood stars to Indira Gandhi to prostitutes. It's an insightful portrait of the country as seen through the eyes of its women. (IDA37, $14.95)

Hindu Art and Architecture

by George Michell

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 2000
• PAPER
• 224 PAGES

An excellent survey of Hindu art and architecture, explaining the meaning and construction of principal images and buildings, as well as the development of Hinduism and the corpus of myths that have influenced its artistic tradition. (IDA147, $18.95)

Taj Mahal

by Giles Tillotson | Mary Beard

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 2008
• HARD COVER
• 190 PAGES

An enlightening pocket guide to the myth, meaning and legends of the celebrated tomb, "the queen of architecture." (IDA528, $19.95)

An Autobiography, Or the Story of My Experiments with Truth

by Mohandas K. Gandhi

• BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
• 1995
• PAPER
• 480 PAGES

There is no substitute for reading Gandhi in his own simple, direct prose. A highly recommended glimpse into the personality and life of this remarkable figure. (IDA163, $10.95)

A Fine Balance

by Rohinton Mistry

• LITERATURE
• 1997
• PAPER
• 624 PAGES
• FAVORITE

Set in Indira Gandhi's "Emergency Raj" of 1975 in an unnamed Indian "city by the sea," which bears a striking resemblance to Bombay, this tender novel follows the intermingled fortunes of a Parsi widow, her boarder and two tailors. (IDA92, $17.00)

Beneath a Marble Sky, A Love Story

by John Shors

• LITERATURE
• 2006
• PAPER
• 344 PAGES

Built to mourn the tragic death of the emperor's wife, the Taj Mahal is at the center of this murderous, fantastical and dazzling tale, told from the point of view of daughter Princess Jaharana. (IDA301, $15.00)

Kim

by Rudyard Kipling

• LITERATURE
• 2011
• PAPER
• 432 PAGES

For the sheer pleasure of its prose, insight into the British in India and its extraordinary sense of place, you can't do better than Kipling's classic novel about a boy who travels the Grand Trunk Road with the Dalai Lama. (IDA65, $9.00)

Malgudi Days

by R. K. Narayan

• LITERATURE
• 2006
• PAPER
• 272 PAGES
• FAVORITE

Wonderful tales about a fictional South Indian town, populated by quirky characters whose unique approaches to tradition and modernity are the stuff of great short stories. (IDA59, $15.00)

Midnight's Children

by Salman Rushdie

• LITERATURE
• 2006
• PAPER
• 533 PAGES
• FAVORITE

Crowned Best of the Booker in 2008, Rushdie's greatest novel is a madcap, comic take on the birth of modern India in all its splendid and unexpected manifestations. (IDA12, $16.00)

Sea of Poppies

by Amitav Ghosh

• LITERATURE
• 2009
• PAPER
• 528 PAGES

Amativ Ghosh conjures the tumult of the 19th-century Opium Wars and colonial India in this expansive tale, featuring a motley cast of British, Chinese and Indian characters. (IDA529, $16.00)

The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy

• LITERATURE
• 2008
• PAPER
• 336 PAGES

This luminous, Booker-prize winning novel is part mystery, part family saga -- a tale of lost innocence set in Kerala during the tumult of the 1960s. (IDA31, $16.00)

The White Tiger, A Novel

by Aravind Adiga

• LITERATURE
• 2008
• PAPER
• 288 PAGES

Mordant, funny, angry, horrifying, this Booker Prize-winning tale of a village pauper turned success (and murderer) skewers the ambition, inequity and corruption of 21st-century India. (IDA542, $15.00)

India: Kingdom of the Tiger

by Bruce Neibaur

• NATURAL HISTORY
• 2002
• DVD

This dazzling film of tigers in the wild and pioneering conservation efforts was filmed on location at Bhandhavgarh Tiger Reserve. (IDA248, $19.99)

Birds of India

by Richard Grimmett | Carol Inskipp | Tim Inskipp

• FIELD GUIDE
• 2012
• PAPER
• 384 PAGES

Thoroughly revised, with 73 new plates and many others updated or repainted, the second edition of the masterful Birds of India now features all maps and text opposite the plates for quicker and easier reference. (FG43, $39.50)

Mammals of India

by Vivek Menon

• FIELD GUIDE
• 2009
• PAPER
• 200 PAGES

A Princeton Field Guide edition of Menon's authoritative survey of 400 mammalian species from tropical lowlands to the Himalayas. With large, clear photographs, range maps and introductory chapters on the groups of mammals, conservation and protected areas. (IDA546, $35.00)

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