INDIA
India   |   READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

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Essential Books These 5 items are available for $91, including
U.S. shipping, a 15% discount (Item no. EXIDA105A)		  
Malgudi Days  •  R. K. Narayan
LITERATURE •  2006 •  PAPER  • 272 PAGES • FAVORITE
Wonderful tales about a fictional South Indian town by a beloved Indian writer. Malgudi is a composite of Narayan's two hometowns -- Mysore and Madras -- populated by quirky characters whose unique approaches to tradition and modernity are the stuff of great short stories. (IDA59, $15.00)		   Malgudi Days
City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi  •  William Dalrymple
CULTURAL PORTRAIT •  2003 •  PAPER  • 350 PAGES • FAVORITE
A year's sojourn in Old Delhi provides the springboard for a brilliant ramble through several thousand years of the city's history; architecture, art and literature are leavened and lightened by a mixture of the author's daily life. Any visitor will see a Delhi, New and Old, with fresh eyes after walking through the crowds on Chandni Chowk with the incomparable Dalrymple as guide. (IDA06, $16.00)		   City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi
India  •  Stanley Wolpert
HISTORY •  2009 •  PAPER  • 281 PAGES
A wonderfully literate introduction to India by the acknowledged master. Author of 14 books and a professor of history since 1958, Wolpert distills a tremendous amount of information in this detailed overview, tackling the environment, religion and philosophy, the arts and sciences, domestic and foreign policy and culture. (IDA04, $24.95)		   India
Eyewitness Guide India  •  Eyewitness Guides
GUIDEBOOK •  2011 •  PAPER  • 824 PAGES
A handsome, beautifully illustrated guide to India. It features color photographs, history and plenty of background information. (IDA265, $30.00)		   Eyewitness Guide India
India Map  •  ITMB
2009 •  MAP
A double-sided shaded relief map of India at the excellent scale of 1:2,100,000, printed on tear and waterproof paper. With an index, it shows major roads, rivers, and locations of national parks. Two Sides. 27x40 inches. (IDA18, $12.95)		   India Map



Also Recommended

Blue Guide India  •  Sam Miller   • GUIDEBOOK  •  This informative guide in the popular series is especially strong on art, architecture and archaeology. (IDA631, $29.95)
 		  
Culture Smart! India  •  Becky Stephen   • GUIDEBOOK  •  A concise, well-illustrated guide to both social and business customs in India. (IDA298, $9.95)
 		  
Eyewitness Guide Delhi, Agra and Jaipur  •  Anuradha Chaturvedi   • GUIDEBOOK  •  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  •  Tony Wheeler   • GUIDEBOOK  •  A comprehensive practical guide to India geared for independent travelers. (IDA44, $31.99)
 		  
Lonely Planet India Phrasebook  •  Omkar Koul   • LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS  •  A handy palm-sized guide. (IDA538, $10.99)
 		  
Love Mumbai  •  Fiona Caulfield   • GUIDEBOOK  •  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)
 		  
Curry, A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors  •  Lizzie Collingham   • FOOD  •  This cultural history with recipes is appetizingly organized as a menu (biryani, vindaloo, chai, etc.). Curry explores the origins and spread of Indian food and the interplay between Muslim, Hindu, Portuguese and British traditions on the Subcontinent. (IDA319, $16.95)
 		  
Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God  •  Jonah Blank   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  Blank's entertaining portrait of contemporary India and Sri Lanka mixes reporting, anecdote and myth as he travels, sometimes in the footsteps of India's great hero Rama. (IDA250, $18.00)
 		  
In Spite of the Gods, The Strange Rise of Modern India  •  Edward Luce   • HISTORY  •  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 Calling, An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking  •  Anand Giridharadas   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  An astute portrait of India today by an international journalist. Moving through the cities and countryside, Giridharadas encounters families, workers and entrepreneurs and provides insight into a country in the midst of reinventing itself. (IDA623, $25.00)
 		  
India Unveiled  •  Robert Arnett   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  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)
 		  
India, A Million Mutinies Now  •  V.S. Naipaul   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  In this engaging classic Naipaul interviews people from various castes all across India, provocatively concluding that this collection of competing interests adds to India's strength. (IDA14, $16.95)
 		  
India, A Sacred Geography  •  Diana L. Eck   • RELIGION • COMING IN MARCH  •  Coming in March 2012! Professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard, Diana Eck turns her interest in temples and places of pilgrimage into a celebration of the diversity of popular religious traditions in India. (IDA634, $27.00)
 		  
May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons, A Journey Among the Women of India  •  Elisabeth Bumiller   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  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)
 		  
Mughal India, Splendours of the Peacock Throne  •  Valerie Berinstain  •  Paul Bahn   • HISTORY  •  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)
 		  
The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity  •  Amartya Sen   • HISTORY  •  Lamont University Professor at Harvard and a Nobel prizewinner for economics, Sen celebrates India's diversity of religious beliefs, customs and democratic traditions in these provocative, erudite essays. (IDA346, $17.00)
 		  
The Beautiful and the Damned, A Portrait of the New India  •  Siddhartha Deb   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  Six years after leaving his home in northeastern India for a fellowship at Columbia, Deb returned home to work as an undercover reporter for The Guardian. The novelist's first nonfiction book mixes personal narrative with incisive portraits of a wide range of contemporary Indian personalities. (IDA639, $26.00)
 		  
Handmade in India  •  M.P. Ranjan  •  Aditi Ranjan   • ART & ARCHITECTURE  •  Featuring 3500 color photos and organized by region, this sumptuous album covers the diverse crafts of India with style and authority. (IDA579, $65.00)
 		  
Hindu Art and Architecture  •  George Michell   • ART & ARCHITECTURE  •  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)
 		  
Indian Art, A Concise History  •  Roy C. Craven   • ART & ARCHITECTURE  •  This convenient volume in the acclaimed "World of Art" series is a crisp, illustrated overview of the range of Indian art over the centuries. (IDA16, $21.95)
 		  
Taj Mahal  •  Giles Tillotson  •  Mary Beard   • ART & ARCHITECTURE  •  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  •  Mohandas K. Gandhi   • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR  •  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)
 		  
Gandhi the Man, How One Man Changed Himself to Change the World  •  Eknath Easwaran   • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR  •  Easwaran, who grew up in Gandhi's India, focuses on the nonviolent hero's inner transformation in this insightful short biography. (IDA630, $16.95)
 		  
Nine Lives, In Search of the Sacred in Modern India  •  William Dalrymple   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  From Sufi dervish and Buddhist monk to outcast and temple worshiper: nine people, nine lives, all captured by Dalrymple (City of Djinns) as he journeys throughout India in search of remarkable individuals transformed by religion. At turns bemusing, dazzling and heart-wrenching, this is his first travel book in 15 years. (IDA587, $16.00)
 		  
A Lovesong for India  •  Ruth Prawer Jhabvala   • LITERATURE  •  A collection of short stories set in India, England and New York City that meditate on what unites people across oceans, cultures, and lifetimes. (IDA652, $26.00)
 		  
Gods, Demons and Others  •  R. K. Narayan  •  R.K. Laxman   • LITERATURE  •  Hindu stories freely adapted by Narayan, one of India's foremost writers. They include tales both highly readable and revealing of Indian Hindu traditions, some drawn from the Ramayana and the Mahabarata. (IDA101, $23.00)
 		  
India, A Traveler's Literary Companion  •  Chandrahas Choudhury   • ANTHOLOGY  •  Each of these 14 stories evokes place and landscape, providing an excellent introduction both to contemporary writers and to India's diverse cultures and history. (IDA598, $14.95)
 		  
Midnight's Children  •  Salman Rushdie   • LITERATURE • 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)
 		  
Mirrorwork, 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947-1997  •  Salman Rushdie  •  Elizabeth West   • ANTHOLOGY  •  A selection of 20th-century Indian prose, both fiction and non-fiction, compiled by Salman Rushdie and featuring work by Jawaharlal Nehru, R.K. Narayan, Satyajit Ray, Amit Chaudhuri and Vikram Seth. Published in celebration of India's 50 years of independence. (IDA293, $19.99)
 		  
Passages, 24 Modern Indian Stories  •  Eileen Panetta  •  Barbara H. Solomon   • LITERATURE  •  An anthology of short stories and novel excerpts from a roster of terrific Indian writers, including Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. (IDA625, $7.95)
 		  
River of Smoke  •  Amitav Ghosh   • LITERATURE  •  A clipper ship carrying opium from India to Canton, a nursery ship on the trail of rare Chinese plants, and the good ship Ibis, full of indentured servants, converge in Canton's Fanqui-Town, or Foreign Enclave in this second book in Ghosh's epic trilogy. (IDA638, $28.00)
 		  
Sea of Poppies  •  Amitav Ghosh   • LITERATURE  •  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)
 		  
Season of the Monsoon  •  Paul Mann   • MYSTERY  •  Inspector George Sansi, police detective in Bombay, investigates murder in Bollywood in the thrilling, chilling series debut, originally published in 1993. (IDA384, $14.95)
 		  
Swimming Lessons  •  Rohinton Mistry   • LITERATURE  •  In these witty, poignant stories, Mistry charts the intersecting lives of Firozsha Baag, an apartment building in Bombay, yielding a delightful collective portrait of a middle-class Indian community poised between old ways and new. (IDA626, $15.00)
 		  
The Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna's Counsel in Time of War  •  Barbara Stoler Miller   • LITERATURE  •  A leading translator of Sanskrit literature, Dr. Miller edited and translated numerous works of Indian poetry and drama, including this popular translation of the Bhagavad-Gita in verse form. (IDA348, $6.95)
 		  
The God of Small Things  •  Arundhati Roy   • LITERATURE  •  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  •  Aravind Adiga   • LITERATURE  •  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)
 		  
Travelers' Tales India  •  James O'Reilly  •  Larry Habegger   • ANTHOLOGY  •  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)
 		  
Birds of India  •  Richard Grimmett  •  Carol Inskipp  •  Tim Inskipp   • FIELD GUIDE  •  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  •  Vivek Menon   • FIELD GUIDE  •  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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