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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 EXIDA310. Buy these 5 items as a set for $95 including shipping, 15% off the retail price.
With free shipping on anything else you order.

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Eyewitness Guide India

by 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

The Idea of India

by Sunil Khilnani

• CULTURAL PORTRAIT
• 1999
• PAPER
• 263 PAGES

Khilnani confronts the complexities, paradoxes and challenges of the nation in this brief, elegant survey of India since independence. (IDA160, $17.00)

The Last Mughal, The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857

by William Dalrymple

• HISTORY
• 2008
• PAPER
• 534 PAGES

The riveting tale of the poet, mystic and Mughal Emperor Shah Zafar II and mid 19th century Delhi, culminating in the 1857 Indian Rebellion. (IDA350, $17.95)

Darsan, Seeing the Divine Image in India

by Diana L. Eck

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 1998
• PAPER
• 115 PAGES

Tremendously useful for the traveler, this rigorous guide explains the significance and meaning of Hindu temples, festivals and ritual. Darsan, which translates as "seeing", reveals religious expression in India. (IDA75, $25.00)

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 M.C. Joshi | Jean-Louis Nou | Amina Okada

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 1993
• HARD COVER
• 231 PAGES

This lavish portrait features 158 full-color photographs (including four magnificent foldout panels) by the extraordinary Jean-Louis Nou. With grand exterior views, filigreed inscriptions and bejeweled floral mosaics. (IDA108, $75.00)

Taj Mahal, Passion and Genius at the Heart of the Moghul Empire

by Diana Preston | Michael Preston

• ART & ARCHITECTURE
• 2007
• PAPER
• 317 PAGES

A vivid narrative history of the creation of the Taj Mahal, a memorial created by Moghul emperor Shah Jahan for his beloved wife. (IDA340, $16.95)

A Princess Remembers, The Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur

by Devi Gayatri

• BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
• 1996
• PAPER
• 408 PAGES
• HARD TO FIND ELSEWHERE

The memoirs of an extraordinary life. Widow of the Maharaja of Jaipur, member of parliament and a fascinating character, Gayatri recalls growing up in the palace compound, marrying the Maharaja, her political triumphs and work on behalf of education in India. (IDA149, $39.95)

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)

Slowly Down the Ganges

by Eric Newby

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2011
• PAPER
• 384 PAGES

In 1963, the author and his wife set out an a 1,200-mile voyage down the Ganges River. The title could apply as easily to the ruminative attitude Newby takes towards his journey as to the many mishaps which bedevil the quest. (IDA179, $18.95)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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